There is Aways Another Door
As this post is timed for the last day of the year (in many cultures, at any rate), I thought that this might provide a good excuse to explore Terroir’s ‘door collection’. Doors can be very symbolic (looking out or looking in, looking forward or looking back) and also enormously varied in cultural and architectural terms. What worlds lie behind any particular door? Once inside, what possibilities lie ahead, as you open a door to leave – or to run away?
Looking through a decade or so of door images, it became obvious that doors actually say a whole lot more than that, and also a whole lot less. In practical terms, for instance, a detailed photograph of a door isolates this symbolic piece of architectural furniture from its building. How unnatural. Strike one. It is also very difficult to photograph an open door: if open, the door tends to disappear and the eye is drawn through it – just as much as through an arch, a window, a gate or an arrow slit. So the symbolism of a door, as a solid architectural form, is lost. Strike two.
Here are some open doors. Will I go in (or out)? What would you do?
Some doors have lost their function, or have disappeared altogther, but are not always the worse for that.
On the other hand, a shut door can send a whole host of unexpected messages, over and above its individual design.
Some doors come as a series such as this street in Toulon
Others are less organised - just neighbours (Uzbekistan)
And here are my favourites with which to welcome in the New Year. We hope that a door labelled vaccine will replace the first image below, enable us all to enjoy going through a multitude of doors in safety, and allow us once more to fully enjoy our own and others’ terroir.
