Madison Avenue shopper

One of the fringe benefits of photographing in New York City is the joy of photographing people totally absorbed in what they are doing, regardless of what is going on around them. But, we also tend to make judgments about who they are, often assuming the worst.

I found this lady on Madison Avenue in midtown Manhattan counting her change outside Hermes of Paris. I photographed her because I thought she was a street person who was out of her element, but when I got home and looked at her more closely, I noticed how impeccably dressed she was and the knuckle-to-knuckle gold ring on her hand. She wasn’t out of her element, she was right at home. In fact, the next place I saw her was a couple of blocks away, outside the Ferrari dealership on Park Avenue.