The Roy Colmer New York City doors photograph collection consists of the photographic prints used in Colmer's conceptual art piece, Doors, NYC (1976), which includes more than 3,000 images of doors taken in sequence on 120 intersections and streets of Manhattan, from Wall Street to Fort Washington. The collection is organized by intersection, block, and side of the street (even or odd numbers).
Biographical/historical: Born in London, England, in 1935, Roy David Colmer received his artistic training at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg and immigrated to New York in 1966. He worked first as a painter before turning to film and photography in the 1970s. In 1982, he studied photography with Lisette Model at the New School, where he later taught. He also taught painting at the University of Cincinnati and the University of Iowa and worked as a graphic designer for CBS Records, Grove Press and Carroll & Graff Publishers. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1988 and a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc., in 1990. He is perhaps most well known for the "snapshot aesthetic" conveyed by his seminal photographic project, Doors, NYC (1976). Colmer died at his home in Los Angeles in 2014.
