The Unforgettable Frame: Man with Windex
In 1996, on the bustling streets of New York City, photographer Jeff Mermelstein captured an image that would become one of his most enduring and enigmatic works. Man with Windex depicts a man in a suit and tie, cigarette in one hand, gripping a spray bottle of Windex with the other, standing near a flowerbed containing a mysterious, meteor-like boulder. This photograph, part of Mermelstein's celebrated Sidewalk series, continues to captivate audiences decades later with its potent blend of ambiguity and raw street-level observation.
A Street Photographer's Craft
Mermelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors who moved to New York from suburban New Jersey in 1979, has long been obsessed with documenting the city's streets. At the time of this shot, he was using a Leica Rangefinder with colour negative film, prized for its stealth and malleability. His daily wanderings through Manhattan were driven by a search for surprises, relying on a state of 'calm alertness' to find those rare moments that contained a sense of mystery and euphoria.
The scene near 50th Street and Sixth Avenue presented itself without fanfare. It was only later, when reviewing the negative on a light box with a loupe magnifier, that Mermelstein felt the full impact of the image. The composition held everything he sought: the tension in the man's grip on the cleaning bottle, his poker-faced expression, and the puzzling contrast of his formal attire with what might be a janitor's task. The wilted daffodils and the anomalous boulder added further layers of intrigue, creating a narrative open to endless interpretation.
Enduring Legacy and New Perspectives
Now, looking back after nearly 30 years, Mermelstein continues to find new meaning in the photograph, recently noting the sewer cover for the first time and musing that 'maybe everything will go down it in the end.' This capacity to remain thought-provoking is what Mermelstein identifies as the precious, memorable quality that allows an image to survive the test of time, especially for a prolific street photographer.
The Sidewalk series gained significant recognition after winning the European Publishers Award for Photography in 1999. Mermelstein remains passionately dedicated to his craft, now often using an iPhone and creating videos, with his latest book, What if Jeff Were a Butterfly, showcasing a wild concoction of images. He describes the privilege of finding his life's work and maintains the same fervour for photography he had fifty years ago, always seeking to capture the complex tapestry of the human condition.
