This is a photograph of a women I met when I worked at a shelter in New York. I hadn’t seen her for a long time, but came across her sitting on the sidewalk while I was riding my bike past Macy’s on a cold day in winter. I’ve named the picture "The Benediction" because the gesture of the models in the display window is the same one that the Pope often assumes. For me this picture has a lot to do with women both on the inside and the outside. The homeless woman on the outside carries all her worldly possessions and wears everything she owns. The more privileged women (mannequins) on the inside advertise cruise wear in the dead of winter, and are portrayed half naked, bald and equally alienated. They bestow a blessing on their sister a world apart, yet only inches away on the other side of the glass. Both are in full view on public display and are at the same time, to the larger world, invisible.

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