Through the Window

Taking a photograph through a window may at times be a necessity or a deliberate ploy to frame a composition. Often it is not possible to get closer to the subject without peering through a window or having a layer of glass between the camera lens and the subject.

The broken window frame in this photograph (above) was used to emphasize the dereliction of the empty houses outside. This photograph was taken in an abandoned house – one of hundreds in Liverpool 8. The house seemed to resonate with reminders of its former inhabitants and although I was alone as I wandered around I could sense the former lives that once occupied the front room I was peering out from.

The Anglican Cathedral could be seen at some point from every empty house I visited on this particular day in 1981. Somehow it provided an ordered reference point to the small broken terraced streets. The magnificent masonary of the Cathedral might as well have been a million miles away from the crumbling brick work of the terraces; I felt compelled to compose this shot (above) through the broken window; this might have been out of respect for the former inhabitants who would have stared into the street thousands of times through the same window.

The view from the first floor of this house (below), once occupied by the philanthropist Mary Hughes reveals Pauline House in Old Montague Street.

The Old China Cafe in Kuala Lumpur retains echoes of the Chinese community’s old social life. This magnificent window (below) dates from the early part of the last century and blocks out the chaotic construction close buy driven by the steady growth of land prices.