Emulation Project- Merry Alpern

For this project, I chose to emulate Merry Alpern, and her series “Dirty Windows,” shots looking into a strip club bathroom window by Wall Street. To capture the grittiness of the images themselves, I used 3200 ASA film and a telephoto lens. In these shots, I tried to emphasize the juxtaposition between the clothing of the men, who in the series worked Downtown and on Wall Street, and the women. Their manner of dress is contrasting, and the men’s actions do not match the suits that they wear, yet they still seem to fit right into the picture. In addition, I tried place focus on the women’s lack of interest towards the situations they find themselves in with the men. Although everything seems to consensual on the surface level, there is still a strong underlying feeling of the women being forced into this, not necessarily with physical force, but with the arguably stronger force of needing money. In all, I tried to make these shots emulate as much of the sordidness of Alpern’s “Dirty Windows” as possible.