Mannen bij een deuropening c. 1900 - 1910

G. Hidderley made this photograph, 'Mannen bij een deuropening' at an unknown date. What strikes me about this image is the door: literally the entrance to another place, but also, symbolically, the possibility of transition, a before and after. It's black and white, which gives the image a starkness, but also a universality. It's not about the specific colors of that moment, but the shapes, the light, the contrast. There are two men at the door. One stands in the doorway, framed, while the other leans in, as if not fully committed to crossing the threshold. I wonder, are they about to go in, or come out? That doorway, a void, seems to me like a metaphor for art itself—always a question of what's inside, what's outside, and who decides. There's something mysterious here. Maybe the image reminds me a bit of Edward Hopper's work—that sense of loneliness, the feeling that something is about to happen, but you're not sure what. Art is a mystery, isn't it? A conversation we keep having, across time, across images.