New York: City of Spectacular Doors by Rick Poynor

Allan Markman, East Village, Manhattan

The photographs here come from a new book, Door Jams: Amazing Doors of New York City, by Allan Markman. He was formerly senior graphic designer at the United Nations and his fascination began while working on a poster about ethics for which he spent four days photographing doors around Manhattan. The poster was never used, but Markman found himself compelled and he kept on going. The book is the fruit of six years of crisscrossing the city and boroughs of New York with his camera in search of remarkable doors.
Door Jams (Schiffer Publishing) has all kinds of doors, and sometimes gates, from sleek metal entrances in midtown Manhattan to ebullient spraycan paintings in Brooklyn and Staten Island, to the grand sculpted portals of cemeteries in Queens and the Bronx. With more than 300 doors to show, at two or even three to a page, there had to be some method of organization and Markman has gathered similar doors together, butting the pictures up against each other in pairs and sometimes making a composite image of several doors, which runs without a break across the spread. The linking theme might be style — doors with crosses, doors in arches, improvised doorways secured by padlocks and chains — or simply color; Markman has a good color sense. Sometimes the relationships between doors are looser and more intuitive, like a kind of visual music. These designerly “jams” are often highly effective, though the fusion of images does reduce the impact of individual shots.

See And Read More »»