“who paints with doors”
Alan Benchoam
I was born in Guatemala more than half a century ago. I live and work on this beautiful land. I started in the professional world as a psychologist, but my heart was not there. Since I was a child I always knew that I was a born creator. After graduating as a psychologist and working as such for a very short time, I went to the US to study photography.
I returned to Guatemala at the end of 1997. I worked for many years as a commercial photographer, and I also did a lot of travel and landscape photography, leading to a couple of books that I published. Since my beginnings I also had many exhibitions of my personal artistic photo projects. I consider myself and eclectic photographer.
2013
In 2013 I started obsessively photographing doors, doors and more doors until they completely captivated me. In 2013 I launched my first door book “Pass Ahead” wich sold out.
2014
In 2014, after a professional collapse due to the decline of commercial photography due to the rise of digital cameras and phones, together with a health collapse due to a new outbreak of Multiple Sclerosis, a disease from wich I suffered, the Doors of the Worlds project was born, with wich I created a series of doors in layers, using the technique of “assemblage” (assembly). It was a new type of craft photography on the market and it was very well accepted. The project started to lift me up again. The “Doors of the Worlds project was the catalyst for me to get seriously into the world of doors. In 2017 I launched the series of collages “This is not a door” wich turned my career around. In an exhibition at a gallery in Mexico, I was baptized as “the artist who paints with doors” and since then I have dedicated myself entirely to my door creations. In 2018 I opened my own Gallery (Alan Benchoam Photo Gallery) wich became the home of all my doors and works of art. Today I live, work and happily hunt doors in Guatemala and when I can in other countries.