Two large panes of glass seen head-on, painted over with broad white brushstrokes and then drawn on: a downward arrow, an upward arrow inside a circle, a rectangle with a red diamond beneath it, the number 125, an X, a black scribble like a crossing-out. Behind the right-hand pane, and visible only through it, a woman in a sheer red dress and red gloves stands with her arms raised and spread. Her white-blond hair and red mouth register clearly; the rest of her is filtered through the paint.
The picture is organised as a diptych, and the left pane — which contains no figure at all — is given equal weight. This is a photograph about a barrier, and about the fact that the barrier carries information: the arrows, numbers and crossings-out are marks left by an actual working process, the shorthand a window-dresser or an installer leaves for whoever comes next. They were never meant to be photographed. They were meant to be wiped off.
Which is what allows the image to do something a straight fashion picture cannot. It photographs the shop window from the street — the position of the passer-by — and it keeps the whitewash that means not yet open. The dress is on display and unavailable at the same time, seen through the very material preventing us from reaching it: a fairly precise account of how fashion images work in general, and one this photograph is willing to make literal rather than merely imply.
Two large panes of glass seen head-on, painted over with broad white brushstrokes and then drawn on: a downward arrow, an upward arrow inside a circle, a rectangle with a red diamond beneath it, the number 125, an X, a black scribble like a crossing-out. Behind the right-hand pane, and visible only through it, a woman in a sheer red dress and red gloves stands with her arms raised and spread. Her white-blond hair and red mouth register clearly; the rest of her is filtered through the paint.
The picture is organised as a diptych, and the left pane — which contains no figure at all — is given equal weight. This is a photograph about a barrier, and about the fact that the barrier carries information: the arrows, numbers and crossings-out are marks left by an actual working process, the shorthand a window-dresser or an installer leaves for whoever comes next. They were never meant to be photographed. They were meant to be wiped off.
Which is what allows the image to do something a straight fashion picture cannot. It photographs the shop window from the street — the position of the passer-by — and it keeps the whitewash that means not yet open. The dress is on display and unavailable at the same time, seen through the very material preventing us from reaching it: a fairly precise account of how fashion images work in general, and one this photograph is willing to make literal rather than merely imply.