From Window to Window
When traveling to new places, I often take snapshots of windows that I find to be alluring or hauntingly interesting. Windows are liminal or threshold states, and I am always intrigued by moments when the interior and exterior realms are in dialogue.
Photographs of the windows I have documented over the years serve as portals to the various places where I have lived, explored, and chosen to return to.
Bulgaria, Italy, the Hudson Valley, and the American West are a few of the places where the rhythm of day-to-day life is softened by layers of billowing curtains or the patina of buildings in perpetual repair.
I layer myself into these locales – peering in through a window, catching my reflection, and discovering a sense of rootedness in the process. These photos cumulatively feel like I am building a grander, multi-windowed dwelling that might potentially house and preserve collected memories, objects, and stories. It is a form of nostalgia, but not for something that actually existed or continues to exist as is.
This may be the core of my project, “The Other Upstate.” The photographs in this visual memoir often depict windows, facades, and terrain – serving as a reminder of locations that become interconnected in ways the lens seeks to interweave.
Through these windows, there is the possibility of architecting something new or of unearthing a cohesive framework. These various locales and spaces are united by soil and the mystery of dreams to be lived beyond the coordinates and planes.
More on that next time.
[ all photos: Abigail Doan studio ]