I’ve taken more than 120,000 digital photographs in the last couple of decades, all indexed by descriptive keywords and catalogued in the software I use to manage the massive amount of files. In a few keystrokes, I can locate photos that fit any description.
Birds? More than 50,000. One common species of bird, sparrows? About 8,500. Butterflies? More than 1,500. Tennis? More than 15,000. Sunsets? Street scenes? Fountains? Cemeteries? Hot-air balloons? Hundreds.
But when I was looking through my database a few weeks ago, one subject surprised me: I have quite a few photos of doors, the subject of my featured gallery for March.
I know I have a tendency to shoot arched entrances (some of which could have a door), arched walkways, and other similar scenes, but I never realized how many photos I have showing actual doors.
After looking through the photos, I realized a few common characteristics that caused me to drop what I was doing and get a photo of a door. The scenes are all colorful, or contain interesting architecture, or convey a sense of history or age. And they have compelling composition, something that captures a photographer’s attention.
I also realized something else: Almost every photo of a door was taken outside the United States. The reason, I guess, is that the United States has boring doors.
Many of the doors I’ve photographed are on buildings nearly as old as — and often older than — the United States. For instance, a number of the doors I’ve photographed in Europe are on buildings with long histories, structures that have been maintained, refurbished, and repurposed many times over the centuries. Some were more than 500 years old.
In the U.S., a federal program designed to protect and maintain historic buildings didn’t exist until 1960, and didn’t become fully operational until the National Register of Historic Places was established in 1966. Until 60 years ago, there was little incentive for communities to preserve or protect buildings that had potential historic relevance. Old was bad, new was good, so the country became home to a plethora of businesses operating behind identical steel-framed glass entrances and homes with cookie-cutter doorways.
That’s not to say that there are no eye-catching or historical doors in the United States. It’s just saying that I’ve found few during my travels.
But I’ll keep looking.