Comments on: Book Review: The Faith of Graffiti

By: Barbara Hirschfeld

Barbara Hirschfeld — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 01:36:42 +0000

I love the free, undisciplined nature of graffiti and not all of the best examples are in spaces normally considered public.

I photograph a lot in abandoned spaces and some of them are virtual art galleries of graffiti with a message. Some are beautiful.

Graffiti goes back a long, long way. The caves at Lascaux are Graffiti, Brassi photographed Graffiti in Paris in the 1920′s and it was published into a photography book that is very difficult to find today.

There is a difference between tagging, the quick hit and run defacing of public property, and the thoughtful, creative work of those untrained graffiti artists who decorate the walls of spaces most of us will never see.

Visit my gallery at caconline.org Barbara Hirschfeld and some examples are there.

Barbara

By: Amira Hanafi

Amira Hanafi — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:10:30 +0000

On a recent walk, I took some photos of graffiti in El-Manial, Cairo: http://transhumancity.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/graffiti-in-el-manial/ It seems that this graffiti is still very much in the stage of “here’s my mark, I am here, I exist” – some of it even contains the boys’ phone numbers. Only yesterday did I catch my first glimpses of a more artistically advanced graffiti in Cairo, much of which was on the exterior of a private building enclosed by a high wall. I found it very curious that the more advanced graffiti remained hidden from the street. In another location, I noted a style of graffiti “removal” that does not attempt to match the wall’s previous color: a fat black x over each letter of the tagger’s mark.

By: Kathryn

Kathryn — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:59:07 +0000

Right Eppie,

But to be totally pragmatic, I think it’s easier to love graffiti from a distance. When you live around it, say you suddenly find yourself in an area that’s riddled with graffiti, there is a reality that you’re in an area that’s run down, and you’re more likely to get mugged. So there are real-life associations that can’t be ignored. In a utopian world, it could be seen as art and artwork everywhere, but the reality is that places with a lot of graffiti have bigger fish to fry in terms of crime and can’t even begin to tackle grafiti, and that’s the context in which the art form exists.

By: epppie

epppie — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 05:44:02 +0000

It’s quite amazing to consider the cultural flowering that happened in NYC in the seventies. From Rap to Disco to Punk to Breakdancing to Graffiti, seeds were established that have grown into a global culture in the decades since. Graffiti is a highly sophisticated global artform now – but unrespected in the land of its birth – as has been the case with so many American cultural movements.

By: ted stanuga

ted stanuga — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:23:07 +0000

I always like the work done by the local maintenance person after the fact….” mix up a color that matches the brick and paint it out”. After a few years of this…there exists an unintended entablature around the base of the building, in colors that approximate those of the building materials…it’s as if the building is sitting on this or rising from it. This is process at work big time, with all the anger and frustration ownership can muster.