I have been carrying my cameras on long walks or drives across New York City, taking pictures of doorways, from elegant carved wood doors from the last century, to industrial fireproof doors covered with graffiti or folksy doorways of storefront churches.

Once I came across a book showing old doors in the Greek islands, and was struck by the similarities to the gnarled and battered doors of aging brownstones in my neighborhood.

Doors can paint a surprisingly eloquent picture of the people who live behind them, and of the rising and falling fortunes of a neighborhood. They are the first thing you see, the entrance to a person's private life.

Sometimes the message is in the material - wood or metal - and design. Sometimes it is in a telling detail, like a tiny American flag tacked to the corner of a house in Harlem, or a stenciled "no menus" sign on a small Victorian tenement. I have photographed doors in the South Bronx, the East Village, Chelsea, and the Upper West Side and my home neighborhood of Harlem, and this is still a work in progress.

Here is the beginning of the first draft of that work. I hope to combine my photographs, research and thoughts into a book on Old Doors of New York.

Photography has been an important interest of mine since 6th grade, when my father bought me my first 35 mm camera. He has taught me most of what I know, and I have since moved on to my third, most professional camera.

Daphne Barbanel
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The Doors of New York