I lived in Queens, New York for a short time. It was there, on a street off of Jamaica Avenue that I saw the first door outside of a movie or illustration that made me think, This doesn't belong here.
There in the middle of a residential block was a squat brick building with a tree growing out front. On either side of the old stone steps were high flowering plants and vines. At the top of the steps was a rickety, gray, wooden door, uneven in its frame and an inch off it's threshold. Poking out underneath was a folded corner of black tarp.
I was mesmerized. It was the strangest cross between urban poverty and a fairy tale I had ever seen. I took a picture of it, but now, sadly, I'm not sure where that picture is.
The significance of doors, doorways, windows, portals, and thresholds is everywhere in our stories and those of our predecessors. Since that first experience in Queens, I have loved photographing them and will undoubtedly continue to do so.
Here are a few recent photos I captured while in upstate New York.
When I was in graduate school, I went to a house party. The house was split into three apartments - two downstairs, separated by a small entry hallway, and one large loft apartment upstairs. All the occupants knew each other, and were close friends, so the whole house was open for the gathering that night.
The three people that lived there all had radically different tastes and were from different walks of life. One was a college English professor who also loved music and played in a band; One was a college graduate student and Teaching Assistant, and the woman who lived upstairs was a retired lawyer who now smoked large quantities of pot, practiced yoga and gave free legal advice.
I wandered between those three apartments that night experiencing something like euphoria as the very texture of space changed from apartment to apartment to apartment.
One loud with boisterous college students, drinking, playing pop music, and hooking up.
Cross the threshold into the hallway, then through the next door.
One quiet with a large group of grad students and professors sitting on couches, passing joints and pipes, and occasionally commenting of the film playing on a large flat screen television in the living room. In the adjoining kitchen, whispered conversations by candlelight between four poets and a student about the nature of language and subjectivity.
Cross the threshold into the hallway, through the next door and upstairs.
A smoky blanket of incense in the air. The smell of pot and patchouli and people dancing to Bill Withers, Sam Cooke, Al Green, Marvin Gaye, and Curtis Mayfield.
Three radically different spaces, containing many completely different states of being. All I did was pass through some doorways.
Have you ever walked through a door into a room and forgot why you went there in the first place? It's because you crossed a threshold and your brain did a reset to adjust to the new environment.
On the other hand, if you're lucky enough to be fully present and aware when you pass through a doorway into a new space, it can be like interdimensional travel or traveling in time. Try it out the next time you visit a strange place.
In the meantime, be good to each other.
~MS
