“A Doorway” — Decorated doorway in a stone building, Aberdeen, Scotland.
For some reason I can’t quite define, doors seem to be a popular photographic subject. Perhaps it is curiosity about what lies behind them — both the prospect of something being hidden and the notion of leaving one space and entering another. I often photograph them without quite knowing why, only intuiting that they appeal to me. Here I liked the contrast between the cold and angular nature of the stone structure and the the organic forms painted on the doorway.
“The writing’s on the wall” — An Aberdeen wall covered in street art and other things.
This is another photograph from our day in Aberdeen, Scotland. We basically spent the majority of the day walking — going down toward the dock area from our lodgings and then wandering. In an old section of central Aberdeen we found ourselves in an area with a lot of street art — posters, paintings, graffiti, and more. One surprise was that it all seemed oddly organized and neat. View this photo large, and try to make sense of the collection of bits and pieces.
“White Door, Dublin” — A white door surrounded by colorful street art, Dublin.
I photographed this doorway on a block in Dublin’s Temple Bar District that features several little shops — eateries, a used clothing store, and so forth. Temple Bar is a busy place and not visually subtle. So I imagine that the bar is pretty high when it comes to attracting the eyeballs of passers-by. As a result, there is eye-catching exterior paint, large and colorful signs, and more.
“Poetry 86” — A weathered Aberdeen wall with graffiti, pipes, and street art.
It may seem odd that someone cast as a “landscape photograph” is also intrigued by rough-edged urban scenes. To some these subjects may seem as radically different from natural landscapes as can be imagined, but I see connections. In fact, I like to think of photographs like this one from Aberdeen, Scotland as “urban landscapes.”