I am one of those people who love to wander lonely streets in unknown places exploring with my camera, leaving the comfort zone back home in search of unfamiliar places. Walking on the streets of a completely new town as it subtly unfolds its character is truly amazing!
I am drawn to smaller towns or villages that are untouched by urban influence. They are colourful, intriguing and full of life. I find doors and windows of such places fascinating! Doors represent the unknown, stimulating curiosity and enticing us to open and find out what lurks beneath them.
There is more to doors than just beautiful subjects for photography and charming wooden/metal structures. Doors are peek into the peoples' life. Each door with its distinct character evokes range of emotions that personifies people living behind them.
From happy homes filled with laughter, homes shrouded with mystery, homes that show signs of dereliction; the grim dwellings of doom, homes fenced to ward off intruders yet luring the passers by, homes tired of being witness to former glory, lying neither unoccupied nor abandoned yet not open to public. And then there are homes with cultural heritage meticulously passed down by generations, homes that give away heartache, hope, silly banter, long, never ending wait and utter hopelessness....the doors of the homes tell all those stories.
Yes, doors signify myriad hues of life!
The dream interpreters denote different meanings to doors; a door opening outward is a sign of need to open up to the world and the door opening inside represents yearning for self discovery. An open door also is interpreted as new opportunity being granted while the closed door represents denial of opportunity.
I wonder how does one comprehend which doors to walk through and which ones to open or close and what about the doors that we close and regret for life and the doors that we wait for lifetime to open and let us in, both literally and figuratively?
My fascination for photographing doors can best be explained by the following poem;
"Windows" by Charles Baudelaire
"Looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window.
There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle.
What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane.
In that black or luminous square life lives, life dreams, life suffers.
Across the ocean of roofs I can see a middle-aged woman, her face already lined, who is forever bending over something and who never goes out.
Out of her face, her dress, and her gestures, out of practically nothing at all, I have made up this woman's story, or rather legend, and sometimes I tell it to myself and weep.
If it had been an old man I could have made up his just as well.
And I go to bed proud to have lived and to have suffered in some one besides myself.
Perhaps you will say "Are you sure that your story is the really one?"
But what does it matter what reality is outside myself, so long as it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am?"
