Windows! I love them. I can’t really choose from among the many in my archives, so I’m posting a sampler. I have big windows. (This big window at the Brandywine River Museum reveals a small person peeping into it):
This is a high class shop window:
and a more proletarian one:
And then there are sexy windows:
And artsy windows:
And there are stained glass windows. The first, set into thick 12th century Romanesque stone walls, is in a small village church in Taizé, France:
The other comes, surprisingly, from a 20th century cathedral in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania! But it was produced according to old methods, and the result is as stunning as any centuries older:
This hardly exhausts the categories (there are views-out-of! there are buildings-with-many!) or my supply of windows. But because I don’t want to exhaust your patience, I’ll stop here — and wander over to the window and see what I can see this rainy afternoon —
Judith, what a great selection. I especially like the first one, a clever self portrait, I guess – because otherwise I could not tell which side is inside and which is outside. I think it’s this ambiguity that intrigues me.
But I very much like the other pictures too. Shop windows are fun to photograph, are they not? And churches … are churches, (almost) always impressive – and your two very different windows make no exception.
It’s one of the only portraits (self or not) of me that I can bear — I love the yellow-green of the jacket with the rest of the composition. The window is a reflecting one, which increases the ambiguity (I guess).
As for shop windows, they make me wistful for Paris! But there are still always shops, and always reflections, everywhere.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
Fantastic series here! My favourite – the French church
The outstanding thing about that very small (if tall) Romanesque church isn’t possible to convey in the photograph —
The silence! It’s filled with millennia of silence, and its quality is extraordinary. You can HEAR it.
Thanks so much for the visit and comment, Julia.
What a wonderful (glimpse of your) collection! (I, too, am a window enthusiast.)
I suppose we could wax philosophical about Inside and Outside, Looking In and Looking Out —
We’d enjoy the discussion, but I’m not sure it would explain anything!
I know I LOVE reflections, and maybe it’s because they do it all!
Thanks for coming by, Jen. I’ve been so rushed I haven’t got to visit anywhere lately — hope that that will ease up soon. xoxoxoxo
See in, see out, see through – love your collection of windows. I doubt you’d ever exhaust my patience with your photos!
Thanks much, Pauline.
I get tired of lots of other kinds of picture-taking — but windows always see me through! 😉
I used to tell Judy that I could without hesitation fly off to France just to visit that tiny church at Taize and experience the quiet in that wonderful place. That was not exactly an idle threat, because not too long ago when JB was in Japan, I did it. Just sitting on a wood bench in that unique spot, with its centuries of silence, I was able to contemplate the quiet— something I did not feel was possible. The high window photograph brought it all back.
I remember, I remember.
Come into the quiet —
Thanks for the memory, Frank.
It seems that Windows is a popular topic indeed! One of my blogging friends Ruth created a week-long series from the prompt. (You can view her images here: http://rutheh.com/2014/01/11/weekly-photo-challenge-window/) I’m a big fan of stained glass windows; the local Basilica offers some beautiful ones: http://smilekiddo.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/58-tour-the-basilica/
Lovely, lovely.
Thanks, Stef!