Photos

Blue knocker on blue door

Here’s a sort of photo I haven’t posted so far, perhaps because I think it’s at the margin of TE’s motto, perhaps because I’m not sure it has the potential to interest the eventual viewers. However, I admit that door knob/lock/knocker is a recurrent subject for me, although not really frequent. Over the years, I photographed door knockers in Nafta, Folegandros, Peratellada, Ribe, etc. But all these knockers had something in common: they were old and somehow it’s kind of a bit of history I wanted to photograph through them. I mean history with a small «h», the history of the artisans who made them and the people who used them. That’s probably my north-American background, but how not to be a little impressed when photographing a beautiful sculpted detail on a door of a Norwegian stavkirke built 400 years before Cartier explored the St. Lawrence River? So don’t worry, I don’t wander in my neighbourhood hunting for interesting door details.

When taking this kind of photos, often what comes to my mind are questions like these: Who was the man who installed it? Was he young or old? In love and happy or sad and lonely? What is it he had for supper that evening after working on it? And what did he do after supper? What about the rest of his life, the way he died? Stupid questions that have no answers but they somehow force you to imagine the life of the people who lived there in the past.

The door knocker on this photo is likely not very old but it certainly has some age. It has been photographed in the village of Chora on Alonissos (Sporades). Chora is a very picturesque village that has been severely damaged by an earthquake in 1965. The residents were then very much encouraged (forced?) to move away. Today there would be only a few year-round residents, and most of the restored houses belong to European/Greek vacationers.