Words: Owain Johnson
Photos: Laura Jones + website
If you’ve scrolled down your Instagram discover page recently, you might have seen quite a few photographers posting doorway portraits. These include the house’s inhabitant(s) posed, framed by the doorway to their abode. Seems like a handy solution to the lack of human muses outside really – “government making you self-isolate? No bother mate, we’ll come to you.” However, this is a handy solution that offers an air of loneliness with each image. The close-up view of a house obscures its full form, becoming opaque negative space, condensing the frame down to the doorway and the person in front of it. This is self-isolation being represented through literal isolation within a frame. Very meta. The doorway cuts off any tangible connection between the outside world and the intimacy of your private sphere.
This is not a new phenomenon in cinema and photography though. Doorways have a long legacy within film: showing the separation literally and figuratively between characters on screen; doors allow us access to someone’s private space. They’re an entrance and an exit, you can walk and see through them, you know, like how doorways are supposed to work. After all, not everything is three layers deep in academic subtext.