This picture depicts a window in the Metropolitan Museum of Art found in the Ancient Egypt exhibition. Most people go to the Met to photograph what’s inside the museum - not a picture of a window overlooking what’s outside. There are many camera worthy things inside the museum but the flaneur, an observer, notices the beauty of the window. It lets in natural light to the crowd. But for the flaneur, it lets in imagination and hope. Hope because there are blue skies and green foliage in the middle of the most populated city in America. In the midst of the wild trees in the distance, there is a pale grey lamp pole jutting out. This kind of juxtaposition in art between nature and industrialization was also found in 19th century Paris. In Paris in the 19th century, artists starting painting exactly what they saw - not just pretty dresses women wore to the opera, but lamp posts at garden parties too. At the Met, the sleek iron bars of the window feel almost cage-like. As if the art inside the museum is imprisoned, possibly to separate the formal art from the art of everyday life.

Being able to imagine the ‘other side of the window’ is one of the many things Baudelaire and Paris gave our modern society. Looking through a piece of transparent glass gives the flaneur an opportunity to imagine. The flaneur is a person walking through life, seeing the crowds and seeing the potential of every interaction and non-interaction. Every moment is special because you can never get it back. In every moment, there is art, it all depends on what you envision. Windows can be used as an opportunity to imagine because you don’t see something exactly as it is when you look through a window or sometimes it is blocked by shadows. Baudelaire says the beauty of the window stems from the fact that you can’t see everything. When you look through a window to a house you see a snippet of someone else’s reality for a fraction of a second, but you see whatever you want to see during the rest. It doesn’t matter what is occurring on the other side of the window to a passerby, what matters is what they imagine.