Smooth, rectangular, and with a built-in frame, a doorway is a street artist’s perfect canvas. In his photo series Doorway Galleries, artist Adel Souto documents the spray-painted, wheat-pasted, stickered, and stenciled entrances of New York City’s buildings. In his pictures, these decorated doorways resemble abstract artworks, as colorful and expressive as anything hanging in a modern gallery, but far more accessible to the masses. Some are mosaics of band promo stickers, some look like graffitied vomit, some are carefully composed portraits of aliens and octopi that later get revised with tags.

Souto began the series in 2010, while walking with a friend from gallery to gallery on the Lower East Side with a friend, talking about how many doorways looked like art pieces unto themselves. “I like that they showcase many unrepresented artists, as well as exhibit a lot of the local street artists,” Souto says. “I like how the clash of tagging, graffiti, and stickers (or the removal of them) sometimes creates a much larger work of art, like a collage.” About 80% of his photos were taken in Lower Manhattan and North Brooklyn, with a few from Queens and the Bronx, as well.

Here, a gallery of some of the city’s best doorways-as-artworks, shot by Souto.

See more of Souto’s work here.

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