by Drew Martin
My neighborhood for the past dozen years came with a serious Peeping Tom. He is an older, married man with kids in college. Interestingly, he is also a very visual person - an industrial designer. I think it is instinctual to look at a lit window, like moths to flames. I try not to do it when I am running every morning before sunrise because there is something naughty about it but mainly because what I typically get a look at are bald (albeit hairy) ugly men doing their thing in the bathroom. That being said, about a month ago I was running a little later than usual (because I had the day off) and just as I ran by one home a naked woman stepped up to her window. It all happened in the split second I ran by - I probably even ran faster so as not to be seen as the voyeur - but there was a part of me that was piqued. In many regards all photography and art, movies and television shows, people-watching and surfing the web is a form a voyeurism, which has various social responses and legal actions. I define it as a matter of intention and interaction. If you go out of your way or change course or slow your pace to indulge, then you are hooked. Pictured here is Edward Hopper's Night Windows from 1928.