Door to door.

I’ve started my door collection.

With a half hour to kill earlier tonight, I sped through a few downtown blocks on foot, looking for doors.

Representing both an entrance and an exit, freedom and confinement, protection and isolation, beginnings and endings – doors are simple but compelling symbols. A door is an edge; a boundary – sometimes guarded or locked – marking the transition from one state to another.

Once I started looking, I couldn’t help but wonder how we choose to represent the entrances to our public and private dwellings. What does the style of a door say about how we’d like to be perceived? How welcoming we are (or not)? What someone might expect to find on the other side? It’s in our nature to be intrigued by the burning question of what’s behind a closed door (or inside a closed box).

I don’t know what’s behind every one of tonight’s doors. Maybe some day I’ll venture inside…but for now I think I’ll just admire them from out here.