Portal 11

Portal 11: Carinthia, Austria/Philadelphia (16 July 2016)
(For other works in my Portals series, click here.)

This door [made of walnut with various wood inlays, with iron lock and hinges] is from the central, ceremonial entranceway to the Stiegerhof room ..., a reception chamber from the second floor of a Renaissance manor house. The top panel of the door bears the name and coat of arms of Wolfgang Paul, the owner who had the house renovated, and the date 1589 (presumably the year the decoration of the room was completed). The bottom panel bears the name and coat of arms of Urban Holzwurm, the master woodworker and builder who was probably responsible for the renovation of the house as well as the creation of this door. The side of the door seen here was the most elaborately decorated one in the room and would have been visible only to people who were inside the room when the door was closed.

-- from wall label text (1929-56-1), Philadelphia Museum of Art

Portals 8, 9, and 10

Portal 8: Philadelphia (4 April 2015)

Portal 9: Munich (24 September 2014)

Portal 10: San Gimignano (26 April 2015)

(For other works in my Portals series, click here.)

Doorways are so material a feature in every edifice, so much may the majesty and importance of public buildings and the beauty and convenience of private dwellings be improved or deteriorated by the judicious or inelegant arrangement of the door, that it is to be hoped, these will be considered sufficient reasons for the attention, which it is proposed to bestow upon the subject. If from the mouth the human countenance derives beauty and expression, so does a façade become appropriate and graceful from the proper allocation of the door, the primary object to which every other is subordinate.

-- from Thomas Leverton Donaldson, A Collection of the Most Approved Examples of Doorways, from Ancient Buildings in Greece and Italy, Expressly Measured and Delineated for This Work (London: Bossange, Barthes and Lowell, 1833), p. v

Portal 7

Portal 7: Quebec City (24 May 2014)

(For other works in my Portals series, click here.)

A door just opened on a street--

    I, lost, was passing by--

An instant's width of warmth disclosed,

    And wealth, and company.

The door as sudden shut, and I,

     I, lost, was passing by,--

Lost doubly, but by contrast most,

     Enlightening misery.

-- Emily Dickinson, Life series, Poem CXI

Portal 6

Portal 6: New Haven (20 November 2011)
(For other works in my Portals series, click here.)

A doorway is more than merely a hole in a wall through which we get from outside to inside or from one room into the next. A doorway is more than a practical necessity brought about by our predilection for dividing up the space of the world by building walls. A doorway is an instrument for the management and nuancing of space; it is also a punctuation in our experience of the world, and has psychological effects on how we see the world and how we behave. . . . A doorway is a locus of opposites and contradiction. It links spaces on either side of a barrier but it also divides those spaces. It creates a sense of otherness in places and between the occupants of those places. A doorway discriminates between those who may pass through and those whom are excluded. Often they are guarded and kept under surveillance. Usually they can be locked shut. A doorway hides more than it reveals, and controls what may be seen. Passing through a doorway may be a challenge but it is also often a reassurance, the attainment of a place of safety and privacy. . . . As in-between places, doorways are where we can be in a state of being neither here nor there, in limbo, a transitional state of becoming rather than being.

-- from Simon Unwin, Doorway (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 205

Portal 5

Portal 5: San Francisco (30 August 2013)
(For other works in my Portals series, click here.)

  After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will show thee things which must be hereafter.
  And immediately I was in the Spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne.
  And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.
-- from Revelations 4:1-3, King James Bible

Portal 4

Portal 4: Vizzola Ticino (10 July 2005)

(For other works in my Portal series, click here.)

On scenes of solitary windows as a motif:
"No figures are present to lend thematic interest to the scene. Properly speaking, these pictures cannot be considered as genre paintings at all ... . The pure window-view is a romantic innovation--neither landscape, nor interior, but a curious combination of both. It brings the confinement of an interior into the most immediate contrast with an immensity of space outside, outdoors, a space which need not be a landscape, but can be a view of houses or of the empty sky. It often places the beholder so close to the window that little more than an enclosing frame of darkness remains of the interior, but this is sufficient to maintain the suggestion of a separation between him and the world outside. He is actually put in the position of the 'figure at the window.' The situation closely resembles a favorite theme in [Romanticism]: the poet at the window surveys a distant landscape and is troubled by a desire to escape from his narrow existence into the world spread out before him. ... The window is like a threshold and at the same time a barrier. Through it, nature, the world, the active life beckon, but the artist remains imprisoned, not unpleasantly, in domestic snugness. The window image thus illustrates perfectly the themes of frustrated longing, of lust for travel or escape which run through [Romanticism]."

-- from Lorenz Eitner, "The Open Window and the Storm-Tossed Boat: An Essay in the Iconography of Romanticism," The Art Bulletin (December 1955), pp. 285-86.

Portal 3

Portal 3: Vizzola Ticino (12 July 2005)
(For others in my portal series, click here.)

Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore benefit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.

-- Laozi, Tao Te Ching, 6th century BCE (chap. 11, trans. Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English)

Portal 2

Portal 2: Richmond upon Thames (8 October 2011). This is the second in my portal series of photographic/literary works.

   There were doors all around the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again.
   Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass: there was nothing on it but a tiny golden key, and Alice’s first idea was that this might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!
   Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hold: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw.

-- Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865

Portal 1

Ever since I began bklynbiblio in August 2008, I've used it primarily for the discussion of ideas and reviews associated with the arts and humanities. I've also brought in my own work, such as my scholarly presentations and writings on the 19th-century artists John Gibson and Simeon Solomon. However, it always was my intention to also use the blog as a portal for the dissemination of my own creative work, especially my photography. For the record, I make no claim to being a professional photographer, and in fact I would only ever claim to be an amateur. To be blunt, I'm not that good, and I know very little about how to take professional photos. Digital photography, not to mention software tools like Photoshop and Instagram, has made all of us photographers in one way or another, for better or for worse. So in some ways for me it's less about the ability to take photos and more the conscious thematic arrangement or composition of them that is important. Over the years, I have worked on an art project that I call Portals, and I've decided to start sharing images from the series on this blog. The work you see here has now been dubbed the first in the series, Portal 1: Firenze (8 July 2005). As I post these from time to time, each will be accompanied by texts, and to begin the series I thought I would write a statement about the project and the images. I hope you enjoy it, and please do feel free to comment on the blog. (Note that I hold copyright on these images. You are free to download them for your personal use, but please ask my permission before using an image for print or electronic publications, including on another website. You should always cite the source and photographer for your images, when known.) And now, my statement...

What is a portal? It's a doorway, a gateway, a passageway. It's the in-between space between here and there, between today and tomorrow, between life and death. It is no space and all space at the same time. Sometimes it is open, sometimes it is closed. A portal's very existence is an invitation to look through it and to pass through it, and in doing so a new world awaits you on the other side. It may be better than what you left, or it may be worse. That is the risk and thrill of a portal. We pass through portals every day of our lives and never think about them. Other portals, however, make us stop and think, perhaps because we see something exquisite on the other side and we cannot fathom how we to obtain it, or because we know something dark is there and it terrifies us and we can barely convince ourselves to turn the doorknob. To pass through a portal is to evolve. Portals may be doors, but they may be windows, gates, or simply created spaces in which to pass to another place. My photography series Portals will show you various types of passageways I have photographed through the years. I leave the aesthetic judgment of each image up to you. Each will be accompanied by excerpts from poetry, literature, essays, and/or spiritual texts, each of which will share how portals have impacted and continue to affect our lives. It is my hope from this series that you will appreciate my images as examples of the beautiful and the sublime. But ultimately I hope that the series may teach you to pause every once and a while when you come up on a portal, to think for a moment about where it is you are in life and where you are going, to relish the very life you are living and the experience you are about to begin, simply by peering through an open window or stepping through a doorway to another space beyond.