After looking at other people’s windows, a rather amusing experiment is to observe one’s own windows from outside, to expand the surveyance even further as if the windows could first picture themselves and then see how they look like in reality. Mine are in the fourteenth floor of a high-rise building near to Chaoyang North Road, facing west and north. Most of my windows measure 1m35 tall, except those that are in the closed balcony, as they are bay windows replacing the wall. My bedroom windows are recognisable from away because of their white frames, while all the others are black, and the broken wooden bars on the left. The bathroom window is also different from the others as it has the mosquito net pulled up. On the other side, my northern windows have Christmas stickers that make them easier to find from across the street.

​

Although it wouldn’t be the right chapter to mention this project, given that the photographer used to capture the essence of a window that was in front of his room during twelve years, and not his own window from outside; one suddenly sees the window that Alper Yesiltas looks at as a living body, with its white lace curtain, its wall changing colours, one snowy day and another sunny, and how the course of time has an effect on the window until one day it is finally dismantled, and disappears as in life when one dies. Yesiltas’ project (2017) may thus suggest this active contemplation of the same window over time, a rare perseverance in representing the same element until it might become an obsession. However, in this chapter, I decided to experiment by looking at my windows from farther to closer and from different angles, rather than using one sole frame of reference. Other two smaller experiments were to take one of my windows from another of my windows, and to ask two neighbours to take a picture of my western windows from outside, after indicating them how to recognise them. Letting other people know exactly where I live restricted the sensation of privacy for a moment, although it was only a feeling and not a reality.