Although Bamn‘s works are often iconic pieces of the New York street art and graffiti landscape, he doesn’t seem to get too much attention online. We’ve only mentioned him twice, for his portraits of Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning. There aren’t too many street artists making such prominent and political artwork. I think a lot of artists could take a cue from Bamn and use the streets to get the truth out there. Here are a few pieces he’s done, both recent and a bit older:
What am I missing? Because I don’t have much to add this week for the link-o-rama. It’s the middle of summer? Aren’t people getting up? Am I just not seeing it?
Photo by Alex Ellison
The difficulty with photographing sticker art or graffiti stickers is that it’s really difficult to provide context for the sticker without losing all the details that might make it interesting to begin with. This context versus context struggle exists when photographing just about any sort of street art or graffiti, but it’s especially true with stickers. They are usually so small that you have to get inches away for a good photo, but then it’s hardly clear if the sticker is on a busy street or in a leafy suburb, surrounded by other interesting things or the lone bit of culture for an entire block. This is especially important with illegal work like stickers where an artist is taking a risk to put something in a particular location of their choice (okay admittedly stickers are not all that risky). Understanding the context of the piece can really add to my appreciation for it. I don’t know if I’ve the first person or the thousandth to figure this out and I don’t consider myself a serious photographer, but I think I’ve stumbling across an interesting way to take photos of stickers that balances context and content: Panorama mode.
My iPhone has a panorama mode that I don’t think I’d ever used until earlier this summer, when I accidentally realized it could be useful for photographing stickers. I was just fooling around with my iPhone, seeing if the panorama mode could work if you had something up very close and also something far away that both needed to be in focus. So I tested it by photographing a sticker and trying to move from the sticker to some background elements across the street. I saw the resulting image and suddenly I hardly cared about my little experiment. I saw a photograph that captured the details of a sticker while still giving context to its placement, and I fell instantly in love with the technique.
Obviously taking photos with a wide angle lens or in panorama mode is nothing new, but I can’t remember ever having seen it used for this purpose before. If anyone wants to prove me wrong, please leave a comment. I’d love to see what other people have been doing with this technique.
What do you think of this technique? Does it is balance content and context well enough? These are just some early shots by me, and I’m no photographer, so if you think you can take this further and do it better, please do and let me know how it goes. I would love to see others improve upon this. For me, it’s made documenting stickers so much more fun and fulfilling. Anyone can photograph another printed André the Giant sticker, but this technique highlights how context can make even printed stickers unique so long as the placement is interesting.
Continue reading “Photographing stickers without losing context”
Although I’ve hardly written about Enzo and Nio on Vandalog before, I’ve been a big fan of their work for a while now. They work together to put up some great street art, mostly around NYC and other East Coast cities and in the form of wheatpastes and stickers. Their work is clever and fun, but also a bit controversial at times, which might explain why I haven’t known them to do any outdoor work with permission. There aren’t many street artists left in New York City with their talents who haven’t transitioned into doing primarily legal work, so I have to hand it to Enzo and Nio for keeping their work to street art’s roots of illegal free expression and surprise. Also, while so many street artists quickly fall into a pattern with one or two trademark styles that they unwaveringly stick to, Enzo and Nio put out a visually diverse range of street art. They have some images or phrases that repeat and some works that are part of a series, but it’s not just one series and one series often doesn’t look anything like the next. They’ve even ventured into gif art (and yes, the model in that piece is my girlfriend and Vandalog contributor Caroline Caldwell).
I’ve somehow neglected to post enough about Enzo and Nio, but I hope I can change that starting today. Enzo and Nio are a real pair of street artists, not just artists using the the street.
Photos by Hrag Vartanian, Rhiannon Platt, Erika Sequeira, Jason Eppink, SMKjr and Amolho4
The Greek street artist Bleeps painted the above piece in response to a recent street art festival in Athens. Essentially, a mural festival was held ostensibly to spark discussion about the economic crisis in Greece and “on the controversial issue of the value of street art in a period of crisis.” Oddly it would then seem, the festival featured no Greek artists. This raises the issue of street artists being flown around the world to paint murals in communities to which they have no connection to in order to aid the existing power structures there. Bleeps says:
[In] the field of street art which has become a main “attraction” for the last decade, we have been experiencing the proliferation by corporate logic and the state in an “antagonistic” policy, while independent voices are either kept in silence, or subjugated.
Most recently the Αthens School of Fine Arts (state University) in collaboration with municipality of Nikea and private galleries organized a “crisis” street art festival entitled “CRISIS?WHAT CRISIS?”, from which Greek artivists were of course excluded. The organizers invited 20 European artists to create works for the festival. The formal argument of the Αthens School of Fine Arts to exclude local artists was that graffiti and street art in Athens are mostly anonymous and of dubious artistic value. The attempt to commodify art in the public sphere and the “politicized” orientated one, is more than obvious.
In addition to that a festival’s spokesman stated that the goal of the imported artists is to start a discourse with the local ones. Of course no discourse can occur on the basis of exclusion.
There are some amazing street art festivals around the world, but there’s something to be said for the argument that festivals and murals are antithetical to street art and graffiti. I imagine there is more to the story here than just Bleeps’ critique (although I can’t find much about the festival online), but I think Bleeps makes a valid point. Maybe next year Bleeps will be invited to take part in the festival, but I hope he declines the invitation. After all, capitalism is absolutely brilliant at co-opting it’s critics. As @JonHanna recently tweeted, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they make you a brand, then they win.”
Photo by Bleeps
A piece of street art that’s only executed with modest skill, but is site specific or is placed somewhere special, can be better than a piece that’s absolutely technically flawless but unoriginal in placement or at home on any other wall in any other city. With this piece, ABOVE has practiced absolutely perfect placement and really got me smiling, even the work could probably be replicated with equal impressiveness on walls around the world. Although, ABOVE does say it took him 7 months of searching to find the perfect spot. Check out why he had to be so particular by watching the video…
TIMING IS EVERYTHING from ABOVE on Vimeo.
Enjoy your Saturday. Also, if you enjoy the above photo, make sure you didn’t miss this post from earlier in the week.
Photo by Luna Park
From what I’ve been able to infer from his Facebook and Instagram, it seems Bault hasn’t been getting up on the street (at least under this identity) for very long, but I’ve already fallen in love with his style. His characters are strange but really nicely painted/drawn and beautiful, sometimes in a Tim Burton-y way. I hope we’ll see more from him soon, but here’s a little of what Bault has done so far.
Photos courtesy of Bault
It was only this summer that I first came across Alleg‘s work, thanks to Juxtapoz, but it looks like Alleg has been getting up in Italy for a good few years. I really love his style. He clearly knows how to draw and paint, but he doesn’t overemphasize intricate technique. Too many murals these days are too perfect and plenty more street artists just aren’t talented enough to make a perfectly-rendered image if they tried. Alleg is just right.
I was just there a couple of months ago, but I’m already missing London. For now, this video of Paul Insect and Sweet Toof will just have to do.
