Heart of the Nation: City of Port Phillip

Front doors are a face we present to neighbours, guests and passers-by. Photographing them attracts attention, though.

Intriguing: “Doors of Port Phillip”. Picture: Ruth Woodrow

Ruth Woodrow’s obsession with front doors started on her daily walks with husband Paul during Melbourne’s lockdowns. They’re keen photographers, so they’d have cameras around their necks – and this subtly changed how they experienced their Port Phillip neighbourhood, causing them to see their surroundings afresh, with “camera eyes”, Woodrow says. She started to notice details she’d never paid attention to before – details like the colours of front doors, their adornments during festive seasons, the shoes and toys parked on the doormats. “I loved how you’d get a sense of the character of the people who lived there, even though you didn’t see them,” she says.

Front doors are interesting objects: they’re both a barrier and a portal between our private and public worlds, and a front we present to neighbours, guests and passers-by. Photographing them is bound to attract attention, though. A few times people came out and demanded to know what she was doing, but they always softened when she told them she was working on a montage titled simply Doors of Port Phillip.

Woodrow, a ranger for Parks Victoria, met Paul on a personal development course in the ’90s; they live with their three Burmese cats in South Melbourne. They’re Melbourne Camera Club members, and share a passion for birding – they jointly hold the record for most species spotted in Victoria in a single year, 392 – but photographing hundreds of doors for the final cut of 96 was all her work. “She was quite fanatical,” laughs Paul, who prefers to take portraits of people in the street. “She’d be like, ‘Come on, I need more doors!’ I was just along for the ride.”