NYC - doors and windows

I am not a city person. However, when I am immersed in a city I find myself drawn to its doors and windows. I have photographed doors and windows in Scotland, Ireland, England, Italy, Hawaii, and Bermuda.

It may be the potential that draws me to photograph them. Who used to live there? Who lives there now? What secrets, what joys may go on behind them? Who is allowed in? Who is kept out? If I were to walk through the door or look through the window, what might I see? And of course, there is some aesthetic beauty on the outside that draws my eye.

And now, some doors and windows from The Big Apple.


I posted this one in two parts because I find the whole shape of the archway exquisite, but the closeup detail is not to be missed, either. Click on the photos to get the full experience.


The above photo must also be clicked on, to see the many faces above each window and door - they are each different, and beautiful.


The second window from the left at the top intrigues me. At first I thought I was seeing someone standing at the window - but when I enlarged the photograph, it appears as though someone has hung several dressing gowns in front of the window. Which made me wonder why they would do that.

The combination of the detailed designs on these doors with the banged-up, scratched condition of them is a perfect vignette of the city itself. Like an aging woman who was rich and beautiful when she was young.


Sometimes the sheer immensity, beauty, and number of windows is enough to make even a native New Yorker tip her head back and catch her breath in her throat in awe.


The windows of a "dive bar" - doors held together with twine. Most of the stickers make absolutely no sense to me, and they are all over the SoHo area of the city. On subway walls, mailboxes, buildings, streetlamps... like secret messages to I will never know who.


This doorway drew me in not because it has any great detail in the woodwork, nor scrolling in the frame, but because that large, luminous "No. 93" glares so oddly at one from above, like an address in a Sherlock Holmes novel. Something sinister happened here, you can be sure.


The green fire escapes are as whimsical and beautiful as the windows next to them... couldn't decide whether to shoot one or the other, so I shot both together.


A closeup detail of windows from a picture I posted previously. I love seeing people's potted plants on the sills - makes me wonder what they had for breakfast, and whether they hang their coats up in a closet or throw them on the arm of the couch.