Joel Meyerowitz American, b. 6/3/1938

At the edge of a wooden dock in Florida, beside a row of sport-fishing boats, two women have stopped in the late sun. One, in a white cap and turquoise sunglasses, wears a flowered bikini under an open white shirt; she has stretched one long leg down to the kerb in a white sandal, a black handbag hangs from her hand, and she has raised a forearm across the lower half of her face, her fingers in her hair. Beside her a woman with short dark hair, her sunglasses pushed up into it, stands in a white crocheted jacket with a wicker bag on her arm and a cigarette between her fingers. The right half of the frame belongs to a sage-green sedan, its long bonnet filling the corner; through its windscreen a bare arm in a striped sleeve lies along the pleated seat back.

It feels as if everything here is on show and nobody quite admits it. The woman in the bikini holds out her leg with the poise of a model between takes, yet her raised arm hides half her face. The other woman looks down and away, busy with her hair. From the car we get only an arm, laid across the upholstery with perfect ease. Behind them a gold hardtop sits in the lot and a hotel block rises among the palms.

What holds me is the distance between the two halves of the picture. On one side I see women dressed to be seen, managing, it seems to me, how much of themselves the afternoon will get; on the other, the heavy, polished car, and someone who stays inside it and simply reaches. Who is looking at whom? The women carry themselves like people who expect to be watched. The arm along the seat has the calm of someone used to doing the watching. Meyerowitz takes no side: he puts the bodies and the machine in the same warm light and leaves open who owns the afternoon.