A Field Guide to Doors Left Ajar

Marta Overhang spent four years photographing doors that were neither fully open nor fully closed. She did not photograph the rooms. She photographed the gap.

The book is organized by degree of opening: from 'barely' (a door that appears almost closed but is not) to 'meaningfully' (a door open enough to see something, not open enough to see everything). The final section, 'Doors That Cannot Decide,' is the longest.

Each entry includes a photograph, the building type, the approximate year of the door, and a brief notation of what Overhang observed through the gap. Some of these notations are architectural. Most are not.

A door left ajar, Overhang writes in the introduction, is a question that has been asked but not yet answered. This book, she notes, does not answer them either. It simply records that they were asked.