What’s in a door? A local photographer’s new book shows you

From the gothic, elegant Duke University Chapel entryway to the Coney Island Scream Zone gate, Mason author and photographer Jeffry S. Boerger shows us the door(s) in his new photographic book.

“The Perception of Doors” is a 150-page, four-color compendium of more than 140 doors, gates and passages that Boerger shot in his travels to 17 states and one Canadian province.

Some doors invite you in, like the open door of the brew pub in Ann Arbor. Others, like the condemned residence in Brooklyn with five locks and a security camera, send the message, “Don’t even think about it.”

Boerger also creatively juxtaposes doors on facing pages, such as the entry to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City and the much smaller Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

He also pairs the gangway to the SS United States, on which he sailed at 17, with a man exiting a bus in Denver.

Many of the facing pages have pairings that are humorous, serious or adventurous in odd ways. The photographer stresses that although some are obvious pairings, others are left for the “viewer to interpret.”

He wrote in his introduction that vacations became pilgrimages to photograph doors.

He found one door in our own backyard. The robot Z-53 graces the back door of the Katalyst Gallery on Turner Street in Old Town, which Bob Rose, a local artist and muralist, painted. Boerger has an ongoing exhibit of 30 prints at MICA Gallery, two doors down from Katalyst.

In addition to his photography skills, Boerger was active in local theater as a set designer and an actor for more than 30 years. He also uses his creative skills in folk music and custom woodworking. He can trace his set design experience to an internship with BoarsHead Theater.

Boerger said he wanted his first photographic book be a journey for the viewer that helps them “dive into the personal well of memory.”

Boerger’s obsession with doors began innocently, photographing one here and there.

Everyone will have a favorite door from the book. Mine is the entry to the freak show at Coney Island.

The doors in Boerger’s book are constructed of every imaginable material: stone, glass, wood,  mirrors and steel bars. Regardless, most of them seem to call out, “C’mon in.”  The doors and their surrounds fall into every architectural category and era, making them seem almost timeless.

In an essay, Boerger explains why so many doors are painted blue, a tradition that in some cultures can be traced to warding off haunting souls. In others, blue doors portray tranquility. Sadly, there is no color that signals you are not home, warding off politicians and salespeople from leaving unwanted fliers.

One clever photograph, featuring an illustration of an elegant woman from the waist up, likely a server delivering a drink, is clearly a commercial kitchen door. Boerger caught a young woman peering out from an inset window, through which you can see approaching waitresses. Paired with it on the facing page is a loading dock at Gus & Grey, a Detroit producer of handcrafted jams, with a caricature of co-owner Tara Grey in a pose reminiscent of World War II’s Rosie the Riveter. Visitors to Detroit’s Eastern Market will recognize the brand.

After perusing Boerger’s book, you will look at doors in our community in a different light, asking what they say about those who live or work there.

The back page of Boerger’s book ends appropriately with a quote from Alexander Graham Bell: “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us.”