This one time, at art school.....

I was going through some archived image files this morning and it occurred to me how some things really do come full circle. I attended school for fine art photography starting at the ripe young age of 17. I had a hunch that I didn't want to pursue a career in the field but was obsessed with images and wanted to learn everything I could about making them. I didn't put it together at the time, but many of my project subjects were houses (especially abandoned ones on the verge of collapse), rooms filled not with people but just with light or interesting memorabilia, religious and memorial sites, and little exterior details taken in my old East Village neighborhood. I was naturally drawn to documenting the human environment sans the humans, so in hindsight it's not that much of a surprise that I eventually transitioned into a career as an interior designer.

The series that I stumbled upon below was taken throughout the early years that I lived in the East Village, as an homage to my interest in the way people (myself included, I guess) lived in the city. I was fascinated by the separation of 'outside' and 'inside;' the way I felt my apartment magically transported me out of the city every time I entered it. So I fervently shot entry doors, appreciating them for the little portals that they seemed to be. I stored the series away until years later when I was decorating a real estate office with a nonexistent artwork budget. We printed up a massive grid of the doorknob series and, together, they told an interesting story about my eclectic neighborhood and its inhabitants.