Vintage Photographs Show Manhattan Doorways in 1975 and 1976

Roy Colmer's Doors, NYC is comprised of some 3,200 photographs of doorways taken in 1975-1976 in Manhattan. The photographs, with their terse descriptive titles, serial organization, and constrained subject-matter, evoke the Conceptual and Minimalist sensibilities of their time. But contrary to this implied rigor, there is no discernible system to the streets Colmer has chosen to document. He seems even to wrestle with the very definition of a "door", including at times chain-link gates, loading docks, and the occasional bricked-up wall which had previously been a doorway.

(All photos by Roy Colmer, courtesy the New York Public Library)