THE WINDOW

PAGE 1 (w/essay), PAGE 2 (w/essay), PAGE 3 (sequences), PAGE 4 (no words), PAGE 5 (no words) PAGE 6 (themed example) , PAGE 7 (themed compilations), PAGE 8 (a man in parts), PAGE 9 (black & whites) PAGE 10 (Vignettes)

See connections & themes in sets across the photos HERE. Use the Search bar below to find specific themes, subjects, or images or prints by a one-word tag (i.e. “man”; “dance”; “silhouette”; “crosswalk”; “protest”; “dogs”, “W-1607”… ):

The Window project is like a fusion of street photography, surveillance footage, drone captures, reality tv, tableaux painting, doorbell cameras, photojournalism, wildlife, style and time-lapse photography.

Each photo in this body of work is a frame in a film of the shared city.

The individual photos, in the aggregate, show the complete range of the human experience — celebration, anger, love, hate, danger, boredom, uncertainty, affluence, patience, fear, family, indifference, kindess, poverty, friendship, laughter, sadness, bravery… all revealed in public/private as well as intimate and overt moments (a late-night hair check in the mirrored hotel sign, a couple arguing mid-afternoon, a morning wedding parade). A Taylor Swift dance party at 7:30, and a Motorcycle Club meeting in the alley at 3 am the same evening.

There are birthday parties, shootings, dates, cam girls, fires, drugs, hugs, guns, people posing, peeing, shouting, preaching, kissing, arguing, signing autographs and picking up dog poop. And walking with groceries. And cleaning leaves. And pushing things. There are vehicles: bicycles, scooters, walkers, jets, horses, skate boards, SWAT trucks, Lamborghinis, wheelchairs, school buses, helicopters, unicycles, firetrucks, rollerblades, motorbikes…

The Window captures 24/7/365, from one fixed location, humanity passing through an inflection point - a pandemic, poltical uncertainties, tectonic economic shifts, cultural conflicts, a war in Europe, accelerating technologies, increasingly erratic weather…

The images in the project are an archive of the times, showing he full-spectrum of humanity via everyday moments.

The images show the ebb and flow of individuals and crowds — the lone man looking for bottles in the dumpster at dawn; groups of partiers sneaking drinks just before going to the club; lines of night joggers taking over the sidewalks; the man who always preaches in the a.m. to an audience of none . They record the diversity of identity of a modern metropolis across race, age, class, religion, gender, sexuality, occupation -- mixed couples, grandmas with babies, limousine and public transit users, tzitzit, kilt, burka, turban and cross wearing urbanites, gay and straight couples, fashionistas, construction workers, rappers, and executives moving through their days (and nights)...

We see the $500,000 automobile three steps away from the man picking up cigarettes stubs to smoke. We see businesses, homes and buildings demolished and cranes raised for more condo construction. Utility graffiti shows up on the sidewalks and streets like magical ongoing notation, urban spells for the Sisyphean actions of cutting, digging, paving, cutting, digging and paving of asphalt and cement. Furniture piles up and disappears curbside, the detritus or treasures of people constantly moving from or to the area. We see grocery trucks stalled behind the the tech truck which is parked as it waits for the garbage truck who is idling until the ambulance moves on. And so on.

The Window also shows velocity. The photos reveal the different speeds of contemporary life — physically, as we see motorbikes ride, rollerblades zoom, and seniors ambulate with walkers all on the same sidewalk, and technologically, as we accelerate into an increasingly automated and virtual world — robot delivery, electric vehicles, smart phone prosthetics, apps and augmented and meta realities experienced via the cell phones in every hand. A pedestrian videoconferencing. A skateboarder texting. An Uber scooter GPSing.

MICRO MOVIES

The body of work is like a epic film about contemporary life, but every image is also its own entire movie, hinting at the complex narratives of the the people featured. Some are dramas, some are comedies. Others are romances, or mysteries, or tragedies. Because all the photos in the project are taken from the same single location (a third story window overlooking the street), the setting — a sidewalk beside trees — becomes simply a frame that highlights the unique stories of the characters — the heroes — of each micro movie, as revealed through the specific details of their actions or clothing, expressions, companions, accoutrements and hour of day. The Window is hyperlink cinema, jumping across narratives, themes, time, spatial orientation, and aesthetics (color, texture, clairty) to tell its story. This is especially clear when the series of photos are physically displayed edge-to-edge — in a sense, creating split screen shots — in a continuous horizontal arrangement with all the iterative themes intercut, and with “links” — branches to more information — that expand the narrative of a singular instance via a vertical sequence of more images. The photo of the four-alarm condo fire abutting the image of the family carrying their babies beside the nightclub brawl sequence ascending in four photos adjacent to the shot of the wedding parade… See bottom of page for an illustration of exhibition display.)

In contrast to the street photography of Vivian Maier or the photojournalism of Weegee (where the photographers traveled to or searched out scenes across many sites) the intent was to observe and document, from one fixed place, ephemeral moments, whether it was four in the afternoon or four in the morning. The artist as an “unflâneur”, or an urban version of Jane Goodall. Intrigue, mystery and ambiguity abound in the images — what’s the story? Why does the woman lie shoeless on the ground, comforted by her her angel-costumed friend? Who are the bouquet of red flowers for, carried by the young man? What future are the dramatically gesticulating older couple discussing? What does that casually-dressed man keep picking up with the extended claw, and why is he putting it all in his fanny pack? How does the fight end? Where is the shooter the police are searching for, with their flashlights slicing there, there and there through the night? The viewer gets to answer.

Like crane shots, helicopter footage, CCTV cams or drone captures, the photos are all taken a fair distance from the subjects, and so subtly echo the social distancing experienced over the pandemic both in-person and online via virtual meetings or visits. But the images are not emotionally distanced — in fact they capture the subjects with great empathy. And love — after the inital documentation (and often during), the artist fell for and felt for the subjects. The abrasive girl, endlessly shout-talking in the alley at five a.m., who yanked down her dress and peed right there… became complex and likable when the artist noticed, while photo editing, that her friend, sitting in the car, had casually reached out the door to hold the girl’s hand and balance her as she squatted. Someone cares for this person, and the initial feeling of irritation shifted to acknowleding not only the individual’s full humanity, but to respect, and to recognizing oneself in the situation.

The artist felt the disappointment of the homeless man as he discovered the fancy box of expensive Don Julio tequila in the dumpster was empty, felt kinship with the young man repeatedly changing clothes in preparation for a date, knew the fear of the people hiding from the gunshots, experienced the joy of the women dancing in the rain, worried over the young woman crying in the alley, and enjoyed the exuberance of the kids skipping around the trees. What it is to be alive, in all its scope, is revealed in the photos, and the dignity of the subjects is recognized and honored across the series, even if they are not portrayed in heroic circumstances or grand situations. We’ve all been there. The images in The Window are taken above of, but are not at all apart from, the people out the window.

The photos are an ode to evanescence. The moments, the people, and the setting will never exist again. (The river of time we step through is never the same twice). Each fugitive instant, even if ordinary, is completly distinct, so also extra-ordinary. Lightning strikes right there for half-a second. A ladybug lands on a finger for a few moments. Sunlight streams perfectly through a sliver between buildings, casting an annual beam like an ancient solstice marker. Someone celebrates their thirtieth birthday. A once-in-a-hundred-years pandemic occurs. Planets align in the sky signaling the beginning of a two thousand year new age...

Are the people briefly passing through the frame locals (likely, as some of the Window occured during lockdowns), or only visiting temporarily (also possible, after stay-at-home orders and international travel restrictions were lifted.) Some characters are definitely residents, appearing in more than one photo, but even they highlight impermanence as their appearance (hairstyle, seasonal clothing, and so on) shifts across pictures — some even visibily growing older over the months, leading the viewer to realize that the passage of time is relentless, and that it occurs at every scale, even if the subjects change because of only milliseconds across a Muybridge sequence, one frame to the next.

The entire project was begun knowing it would end. Definitively. The window of The Window is located in the home of the artist, and the building that it is is in will be torn-down. This too is caught in photos, as architects and engineers stand in the street and measure with lasers and document with cameras the demolition and construction to come. (In fact, the buidling will have already been torn down to those in the future seeing this. The magic and paradox of art: what is transient becomes permanent, transcending the present, past, and future).

All the action (and inaction) takes place on a side street adjacent to a major thoroughfare connecting condos, homes, hotels, restaurants, clubs, a men’s shelter, stores, methadone clinics, theatres, luxury car dealerships, an airport, places of worship, yoga studios, food banks, a yacht club, tent encampments, champagne and nail bars, historical sites, strip clubs and parks. There are Uber dropoffs, UPS deliveries, city bike rentals, transit stops, mail trucks, garbage pickups, armored cars. Everybody coming along the sidewalk ends up being funneled through a narrow area between a planter with two trees, and the curb -- it’s like a miniature version of the Bosphorous Strait: to move from one major global region to another you have to pass through this narrow land bridge, which ends up compressing activities both profound and profane. War and commerce. The secular and spiritual. The habitual and the spontaneous. Luxury indulgence and basic survival…

These images tell intimate stories, often via subtle details, from a very small stage. Everything in these images is uncontrolled and of-the-moment. (Though also shot from above, they are the opposite of the super-detailed and huge landscape photographs of Edward Burtynsky; they are also not images of famous or ‘important’ men and women, taken in highly-controlled and staged settings and lighting, a la Yousef Karsh). What factor, in what might appear at first like a banal picture, caused the photographer to document the humanity of that instant — Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment”? A close look shows that, off to the side, someone is carrying a pumpkin, giving a clue to the season; or in the center of the shot, barely noticeable, is a squirrel funambulating the electrical line; or that, by chance, three strangers at a distance have synchronized into a perfect triangle as they walk. There is a wealth of intimate interactions, like a father carrying a child on his shoulders, and there are many mundane human actions — like carrying toilet paper — that nevertheless give deep insight into what it is to be alive in the very early years of the third millennium, in the middle of a pandemic, as we walk, drive, scoot and Zoom into the future.

We tell stories as ways to comprehend the world, to see patterns and meaning in actions, to relate to other human beings. We connect emotionally to the people in The Window through their personal narratives. Even if it’s just a one-frame fable. What’s their story? All of the photos in The Window have multiple different narrative interpretations. Like in the movie Rashomon — where there are alternative and contadictory re-tellings of the same central event — all could equally be true. That man, running very fast, is escaping a dangerous situation. That man, running very fast, is hurrying to some wonderful event. Those two women are having an invigorating conversation. Those two women are arguing. Each person viewing the image will generate their own true interpretation of the story according to their own imagination, knowledge, biases, world-view, culture or lived experience, and construct their own prologue and epilogues for that single event caught in the photo. This also occurs on a macro scale — if all the photos are seen collectively as one work, a panorama, then the singular story it tells of this time and this place will also be interpeted in as many ways as there are viewers. All are simultaneously true, even if contradictory. (Another paradox: this wide-angle perspective of the city was generated by focusing only on a very narrow visual field.)

Many patterns and themes become apparent in The Window when the series is seen in toto. It becomes a relational work, and the more photos there are in the series — as the context for each image grows, increasing cross-photo connections — the more the work expands in meaning. Across the body of work and amongst different people we recognize sets of similar actions, fashion trends, daily habits, peer group clusters, work routines, weekly cycles and so on. We recognize motifs of dog walkers, short skirts, firetrucks, bald men, families, arguments, things in the sky… Abstract patterns also become apparent, like photos featuring exactly three people, or ones with subjects whose backs are to the camera, or the demographics of the city. Even as few as two different photos, when seen side-by-side, can generate contextual meaning: the woman boldly posing in her evening attire with her arms held wide, leaning back against the enormous stretch limo, juxtaposed with the photo of the woman, head down, arms and legs cramped, stuffed into a child’s bike trailer in front of the dumpster. Or the photo of the fireman in his bulky safety suit working on the balcony seen beside the image of the barely-clothed woman working in nearly the same setting. Nuanced thoughts of wealth, equity, gender, race, sex, opportunity, labour, even peripeteia are generated by the simple physical proximity of two images. (On that note, multiple discrete units comprising a ‘single’ larger work — the Window consists of around two hundred photos — allows numerous ways of curating the content for exhibition. For example the images could be arranged by linear date, aesthetic look, location, thematic grouping, rhythmically repeating but separated patterning, random placement for generative connections, or by considered juxtapositions of the images. See more about this bottom of PAGE 2)

The Window, below, arranged in linear sequences of rhythmic repeating motifis, with verticle branching vignettes. The work reads left-to-right as a film (strip), the extended branches like links to more information from a web page, and the gestalt on the wall as a sculpture. (Proposed; more on Page 2)