Photography |Merry Alpern

In the autumn of 2026, Galerie Miranda presents Merry Alpern’s iconic series Dirty Windows at Paris Photo—the first time this major body of work has been exhibited at an art fair. For this exceptional presentation, the gallery brings together vintage gelatin silver prints alongside a selection of contemporary gelatin silver prints produced by the artist, and previewed at Paris Photo. Dirty Windows: During the winter of 1993–1994, photographer Merry Alpern visited a friend’s New York loft in the Wall Street district. He took her to a room at the back of the apartment; looking out the window, she spotted a tiny bathroom window one floor down, from which the heavy bass of nightclub music drifted out. She realized she had a view into the bathroom of an illicit lap dance club, where "stockbrokers and other wealthy businessmen handed over hundreds of dollars and drugs to women in thongs and black lace lingerie." Fascinated by the spectacle, the artist began photographing the scene using high-speed black-and-white film, lending the images a film noir aesthetic. Later, in an interview, Merry Alpern was asked about her feelings while photographing these scenes as a female photographer. She replied: "Although the concept of the ‘female gaze’ never really interested me, as a woman, I could project some of my own experiences onto that pantomime behind the window... At the same time, there was an anthropological aspect: observing completely ordinary scenes in the world of men. Observing the bathroom habits of the opposite sex was a revelation." (...) Galerie Miranda invites us to reconsider this series from a contemporary perspective. Created before the advent of social media, these images—at once poetic and raw—of New York’s hidden side remain strikingly relevant, raising numerous questions regarding the sexual exploitation of women, consumerism, power, finance, surveillance, and the female gaze.