My first impulse here was triggered by the female forms; that came with my Y chromosome. Then come questions about luxury, wealth and advertising (how much do you need to shop at Anne Taylor on a regular basis).

Compositionally, this image can be read as being about abstract curved forms and colors, the mix of scales linked by the necklaces on both women, and the overlaying and ambiguous lines of the forground reflections.

For the insiders there is a weak ironic joke about postmodern appropriation and Richard Prince, who has made a fortune from "re-photographing" the works of other people and presenting them as his own; in particular a series of cowboys lifted from Malboro cigarette advertisements. In a sense, every store window I photograph is to some degree an appropriation and repurposing of someone else's creative effort. Here, I am pulling a "Richard Prince" and reshooting a photograph, except that in my case it is of a woman not a cowboy and the result is much smaller than the original.

See Dennis Dunleavy's blog posting and Randy Kennedy's New York Times article for more about appropiation and Richard Prince.

If you are viewing this page from within a selection rather than through the Store Life 2004 album, of the site wide image catalog, then you might not realize that the first version of this image posted was manipulated with Photoshop to the point of ceasing to be a photograph, taking on a Warhol Marilyn Monroe screen print appearence.