Shop windows - an inventory, 2007-2010
Shop windows constitute the most visible layer of the urban signscape. Together with posters, advertisements and grafitti messages, they constantly update the city's visual environment: they discribe to the passer-by the current state of consumable objects. Created to animate the desire of shoppers, they are also talkative inventories of what a store has to comunicate. Crafted with humor or exhibitionism, some shop windows peel off from the store they represent and become self-referentional signs, mere decorations of the street.
While Péter Rákosi started photographing shop windows a few years ago, his interest in the subject dates back to his earlier carrier as a window dresser. Regularly returning to certain neighbourhoods or streets, he began recording and cataloguing vitrine decorations. The geometric precision of these photographs and their organisation into a series suggest the structure of an inventory.
