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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Eighty-nine: A long weekend in the Big Easy > Maintenance, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2014
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02-FEB-2014

Maintenance, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2014

The front doors of restaurants get a lot of use, and acquire many fingerprints over the course of a day. They are cleaned over and over again, and in this image I abstract the person responsible to maintain the appearance of this particular door. By placing his face behind the door frame, and featuring only the two hands at work – one holding a bottle of window cleaner and the other a paper towel – I make this image into a universal symbol of man at work. I include the restaurant’s logo as useful context.

FujiFilm X-M1
1/250s f/6.4 at 181.9mm iso800 full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
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Phil Douglis14-Oct-2014 21:14
The abstracted man's hand is poised near the water bottle's trigger, while the other hand scrubs a restaurant window. You see the image as "triggering" work, which is a valid interpretation, very close to my own intention, which as I noted, was to create a "universal symbol of a man at work." It would be sad, indeed, is someone were to view this image in the context of negative ethnic stereotypes. I'm sure you would agree.
Tim May14-Oct-2014 17:13
The logo appears on his shirt also - and for me there is another thing that comes to mind here - it is the gesture of the hand on the bottle - Too often our stereotype of men of color is of their hands on the trigger of a gun - here it is a similar gesture. Yet, in this case it is triggering work.
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