I have a bit of a thing about doors.
I’m not sure when it started, but at some point I realised that a ridiculous number of the photographs on my film rolls are of doors. Front doors. Side doors. Shop doors. Doors that look as though they haven’t been opened in years. I even started an instagram account just for windows and doors. Which reminds me that I might just resurrect Window Wednesday but that is another story and I am digressing.
But this one might be my recent favourite.
It’s a little green door, set into an old brick wall, at the back of a small private garden. The garden is fenced off with black iron railings, so you can’t go in. You can only stand on the pavement and look through.
Which is exactly what I did.
There’s ivy growing over the top of the wall, tumbling down on both sides as though it’s trying to hide the door from view. There’s a young tree in a big glazed pot right at the front, still with its label on. A few white flowers. A gravel path. And there, sitting quietly at the back, the door.
Painted a soft green. A little round knob. Brick around it that’s faded and worn, with patches where the colour has gone.
It’s so peaceful.
And that’s what struck me most, because it is in the middle of London.
Not on the edge. Not in some leafy suburb. Right in the middle, surrounded by million-pound properties and busy junctions, with traffic and people and noise just a few feet away.
And yet behind those railings it felt like a completely different world.
I couldn’t stop wondering about it.
Where does it lead?
Is it a back way into one of the houses? A gardener’s store? A shortcut to somewhere? Or does it open onto another garden, and another, like something out of a children’s book?
Who uses it?
Is there somebody who comes out of that door every morning with a cup of tea and stands in that little garden for five minutes before the day begins? Is it the gardener? A neighbour? Has nobody opened it at all in years?
I will never know.
And I think that’s partly why I love it.
There’s something rather lovely about a mystery you can’t solve. In a world where we can look up almost anything in seconds, it feels quite special to come across something that simply doesn’t give up its secrets.
I could, I suppose, try to find out. I could knock on doors, or search online, or ask somebody.
But I don’t think I want to.
I think I’d rather keep wondering.
Photographing it was an interesting challenge, because of those railings. My first instinct was to try to get them out of the way, to find a gap and shoot through it so that I had a clear view of the door.
Then I realised that the railings were the point.
They’re what makes it private. They’re what makes it a little bit out of reach. They’re what keeps you on the outside, looking in and wondering.
So I left them in.
The railings are out of focus, dark lines across the frame, and the door sits behind them, sharp and green and just slightly out of reach. To me, that’s exactly what it felt like standing there.
I love how film handled this one. The greens are soft and gentle rather than garish. The brick has that warm, slightly orangey glow. The pot in the front catches the light beautifully. It feels like a quiet corner, because it is one.
I do think London is full of these little hidden places.
You just have to slow down enough to find them.
Most people walking past this garden will have been on their way somewhere. Heads down, phones out, thinking about the next meeting or the next train or what to have for tea. And that’s fine. That’s life. I’m very often one of those people myself.
But every now and then it’s nice to stop.
To stand on a pavement, in the middle of a busy city, and look through some railings at a little green door. To wonder about it. To make up stories about it. To take a photograph of it and carry it home with you.
I think that’s one of the things photography has given me.
Permission to stop.
Permission to be curious about things that don’t really matter, except that somehow they do.
The door will still be there tomorrow, quietly getting on with being a door. The ivy will keep growing. The little tree in its pot will, hopefully, get a bit bigger. Someone, perhaps, will open it.
And I’ll still be wondering where it goes.
Which, honestly, is exactly how I like it.