Old and Central Havana – Cuba. If you think about it, doors are peculiar structures, and the space they occupy — the doorway — can be fraught. Doors serve dual purposes: to let in, and to keep out. They beg to be pushed opened even as they shoo you away. The doorway, which the door regulates, can be contested ground — it’s where the public and the private abruptly meet. What happens on one side is often inappropriate on the other. Doors are also ubiquitous. They mediate our inside and outside lives all over the world.
“There are so many doors to open. I am impatient to begin.”-Daniel Keyes
The doors of Old and Central Havana are gorgeous. Whether textured with peeling pastel paint or shiny and smooth from a fresh coat, they are statement pieces adorning the city’s narrow, crowded streets. I was drawn by their many colors, ornate carvings, and the stories I imagined them telling. Simply walking the streets of Havana is an experience. Nearly every door is unique, each communicating something different. There were arched doorways with heavy wooden doors slightly ajar, brightly-lit interior courtyards visible. These, I wanted to see more closely, to toe the line separating the exterior from the interior and to crane my neck forward just so. Decorum and respect for the privacy symbolized by the door, however, dictated I not.
There were finely embellished, lacquered doors that begged to have their 
glossy patterns traced with curious fingers. There were tall, stately doors that spoke to past grandeur and short narrow doors that told of entrenched poverty. There were doors wide open to the street, with chairs on either side of the doorway, radio tunes drifting out. These doors, it appeared, were intended for facilitating “looking out” not “looking in.” Some of the most 
loudly painted doors were reinforced with iron gates, as if to say: do look, but dare not touch. Still, other doors were not doors at all anymore. Years of abandonment and tropical storms — and on the Malécon, salt water spray — had left them rotted through and barely clinging to their rusty hinges. Gaping open and offering no barrier between the street and their dark, mysterious interiors, these doors embodied all that is contradictory and complex about doors. These decayed, deficient structures allowed all to come in, but ironically, their very inability to keep outsiders out made them uninviting to all but the most hearty and desperate.
Havana’s doors make something as mundane as walking the streets a journey. Each has something to tell. Each is a code to crack.