Closed sign on a shop door
Architecture,  Lens-Artists,  Themed galleries

Gallery: when one door closes …

June 20, 2022 / 46 Comments

We all know that saying: when one door closes another one opens. Doors symbolise opportunity, a chance to discover something new and maybe unexpected. There’s also a sense of mystery about a door, especially an unusual one. What would we find were we able to open it?

In the universe there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between there are doors.

William Blake

Perhaps that’s why so many of us like to photograph doors. Not only are many of them decorative in their own right, they also pose a question for the viewer.

This week’s Lens Artists Challenge guest host, Sylvia, invites us to share appealing or distinctive doorways. I certainly have plenty of those in my photo archives! So the challenge for me lay in selecting some that I may not have shared before, although a few old favourites may have crept it. Together they form, I hope, an interesting collection.

As always my photos were taken mainly, but not exclusively, on my travels. My feature image is of a shop sign in Hoi An, Vietnam.

Far away blue doors

Blue door and painting of Ganesh

In Jaisalmer’s old town

Blue door and shuttered window

On Train Street, Hanoi, Vietnam

Much closer to home doors

Blue front door with frosted glass

Front door in my home suburb of Ealing, west London (not ours, unfortunately!)

Grey door in a brick wall

An old Huguenot house in London’s Spitalfields

Open doors

Simple shop with open door and key sign

Key-cutting shop in Sofia, Bulgaria

Young girl standing in an open doorway

In Tarrafal on Santiago, Cape Verde

And doors enticingly ajar

Carved wooden door in tiled wall

In the Medersa Ben Youseff, Marrakesh

Faded blue painted building with wooden door

In Bundi, Rajasthan

Very old doors

Heavy studded wooden door

In Al Hamra, Oman

Green wooden door in a faded pink wall

In Arpino, Lazio, Italy

Long past their best doors!

Broken door in a yellow house wall

On a back street in Faro, Portugal

Broken door in ruined wall

In Al Minzafah, Ibra, Oman

Doors with style

Turquoise door with ornamental swags and cherub

In Mechelen, Belgium

Green door with carved cherubs above

In Lucca, Italy

Doors with a message

Wooden door in a stone wall with Commit no nuisance sign

Clock tower door, St Albans, England

Yellow door with painting of a cat and this way sign

In Reykjavik, Iceland

Doors to churches

Grey church door with ornate black hinges

The Roman Catholic Church in Reykjavik

Carved panel showing the road to Calvary

Detail of the door of the Duomo, Pisa

Brightly painted doors

Bright yellow door with blue grille

In Sofia, Bulgaria

Blue door with yellow frame in a white wall

A house in Paraty, Brazil

Keep it simple doors

Blue door in a pink wall

In Twisp, Washington State

Turquoise door in an adobe wall

In the small village of Machuca in the Atacama Desert, Chile

And some not so easy to spot doors

Wooden door with picture frames stacked in front

In the Rue Riad Zitoun Lakdim, Marrakesh

Shuttered door with painting of a girl

In Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin

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46 Comments

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