3 windows

About the Photographer

Flavin, Christine

American, b. 1952

In the photograph 3 Windows (1995) Christine Flavin fills the frame of the image with the windows of a small Italian restaurant that have been steamed over by vats of pasta boiling in the kitchen. The tranquil blank and white photograph merges views of inside and outside in a single picture plane, the foggy panes of glass reflecting the hazy forms of the surrounding neighborhood as a single customer peers out from within. Taken in the historic Central West End of St. Louis, Missouri, this photograph follows from Flavin's interest in old neighborhoods and declining industrial sites. She has gone on to pursue subsequent projects that pursue these subjects in depth, including a documentary study of abandoned mining sites in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Flavin completed a BA in English literature at the University of California, Berkeley (1974), an MA in Media Communications from Webster University in St. Louis (1990), and an MFA in photography and printmaking at the University of Iowa in Iowa City (2005). Since 2006 she has be a professor in the Department of Art and Design at Northern Michigan University, in Marquette, Michigan.