Doorway

Doorway

The photo above, taken by our friend Mike Hewitt during a weekend visit, intrigues me because it presents something very familiar looking suddenly strange.

It happens to be the entryway to the lower part of our house, a narrow, sheltered area (attractive to bats) that I pass by or walk into many times daily, seeing it but not seeing it.  

If you stepped up and went in, on your left you'd find the door to the battery room, and to the right, the door to the guest room...so it's simply an alcove, a place to lean an umbrella, or pull off your boots.

But Mike has rendered it somehow mysterious and vaguely Moroccan. He's always been an excellent photographer, and he's been taking pictures lately using old-fashioned film, the kind you have to send off to be processed, but that alone doesn't explain the foreign-ness of this view.

Is it the odd, washed out colors? The angled shadows brushed across the stucco? Maybe it's just the blankness and blackness of the doorway, like some mute portal into the unknown.

(Thanks, Mike.)