‘You see somebody washing a window, stop, and look’: Melissa Breyer’s best phone picture

The New York photographer on the mystery deli worker daydreaming while she worked

Melissa Breyer has never met the woman she shot in the window of a Brooklyn deli on her morning run, but she considers the image something of a self-portrait. When I first moved to New York," she says, I was an artist who was also working in a restaurant to make ends meet. There's so much of that here: young women waiting for their lucky break. She depicted that time - of daydreaming and reverie, a moment of limbo before the next big thing - so beautifully."

Breyer describes photography as a blend of fiction and nonfiction, and as much of a storytelling tool as a novel can be. There are so many incredible backstories out there that we never hear about. You could see somebody washing a window and just jog by, as I did. Or you could stop, look, and see this beautiful scene. You could pluck one person out of a crowd and take away that anonymity for a moment."