Looking Out a Window: At the Dali Museum

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A recent visit to the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, FL gave me a new perspective on the Looking Out a Window photography project I started six months ago. From the third floor atrium the Enigma, a geodesic glass dome, floods the inside with natural light from above and swoops down overlooking the water, carrying the avant-garde theme of the museum into the natural world.

At first I wondered if those windows ‘counted’. Most of my portfolio for the project to date looks out various versions of the standard rectangle in all its permutations, the standard mental picture when we hear the word ‘window’. I stood there for some time, taking various photographs but mostly just observing.

Glass panes separate us from what is beyond them, not only physically but often mentally. Think of looking out a window at a wet, rainy, and dark day. Your position on the other side of that glass keeps you dry, and artificial light brightens your world. You exist physically and mentally in a different place from the raw, dark outside. The Enigma, perhaps by virtue of its lines, separate you on one hand and pull you forward into the view on the other hand.

I started this project to explore the world looking out a window, and realized that the only thing in the way of making this part of my endeavor rested on my own preconceived notions of a window.

Visit the Dali for its art, browse the magnificent shop on the first floor for unique books and items, but spend some time on the third floor just absorbing the light.

Looking up into the sky

The marina a street below