At the age of 17, Ruth Orkin embarked on a monumental bicycle trip from her home in Hollywood to see the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City, taking photographs along the way. She moved to New York a few years later, shooting baby pictures by day and nightclubs by night until making her foray into the major magazines in the 1940s and 1950s. Throughout her career, Orkin made photographs of the street looking down from windows above, capturing pedestrians and parades passing by, a collection of which she later published in a book called A World through My Window.

The powerful simplicity of this image lies in its composition: as the couple crossed her frame—obscured in a slight blur of motion—Orkin waited until the man strode across the perfect intersection of the sidewalk lines to take her shot, the square grid forming a neutral backdrop for the dark figures, interrupted only by the smattering of bubblegum spots.