Fenêtre, Eastlake Greens, San Diego

Taken from the window of a house under construction, this image by Stéphane Couturier shows the outskirts of San Diego, California, transformed by rapid suburban development. The viewer’s eye moves through multiple layers in the image that depict different states of completion—from finished and occupied houses in foreground, with new green lawns, to the bulldozed landscape in background.

While windows and doorways have animated images throughout the history of architectural photography, Couturier takes the unique perspective of looking out through an opening. Here, he aligned the raw lumber casing with the border of the image, making viewers aware that photography always frames what the eye can see. In this case, the window becomes a stand-in for the aperture of the camera and is as much a subject of the work as the vista.