Leslie Gill :: Studio Window, West 56th Street, NYC, ca. 1938 / src: The Guardian. In the early years, the presence of windows in photographs was driven by necessity: photography in its infancy required great amounts of light, and windows obliged. This history may have mattered little to Leslie Gill when he created this tightly framed masterpiece, which looks almost as if someone has opened up a panel in one of Piet Mondrian’s canvases to discover the real world hidden behind it. Courtesy Robert Mann Gallery.