AZADE
Opening reception 28/08
Merry Alpern
Fenster Zur Wall Street (Dirty Windows)
Scalo 1995
Photobook
Hardcover
30 x 24 cm
English, German
One evening in 1993, Merry Alpern visited a friend living in Manhattan’s Wall Street district. At the back of the loft, she discovered a window overlooking the bathroom of an illegal strip club. Night after night, she watched a parade of suited traders and dancers in sequins exchanging kisses, cash, and drugs—in a clandestine choreography of desire and illicit transactions. For six months, Alpern assembled a body of work as powerful as it is unsettling.
Dirty Windows is no mere expression of voyeuristic curiosity. It is a striking vision of the human condition—wretched and sorrowful even in its most sordid pleasures. When first shown in 1994, the series sparked scandal. The National Endowment for the Arts withdrew the artist’s grant, but the act of censorship only accelerated her rise to prominence. Cult for some, provocative to others, Merry Alpern’s work offers a two-way vertigo of being both watcher and watched.
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