West Side Window

I think this was on the west side or it could have been somewhere in Queens, but the more I think about it, the less likely that seems. I don't have the original slide handy either, this was a scan I made back in 2000 during my last foray into the bowels of the printing trade, so I can't readily tell the type of film, either. I came across it, naturally, while looking for something else. It seems pretty grainy to me, but I can't tell if that's from the film or the scan itself. The scanner it was made on, a Crosfield Magnascan, while a high-end machine for its time, unfortunately had as its time the late 1970's. And it was a machine whose inherent design was for halftone reproduction, so the native resolution of 120 dpi was sufficient for its design specs.

But I still have a lot of things to like about this picture. I like the short depth of field, I like the reflection of the buildings in the glass. I like the way those reflections are soft in the face of the sharpness of the glass, as that's the sweet spot of clarity in the image. I like the way the cat is staring at the camera and how it's head is in almost perfect alignment with the head of the carving below the window. I like how everything is neutral gray, except for the shutters, and I like the way the shutter on the left leads up into the line of the reflected buildings.

I'll grab a year out of the air and say this was taken in 1988.