Step-by-Step. Graffiti in the Second Laneway

Not far from the Rona and Insa piece is another dead end lane that houses its own gallery of surprising delights:

Rone & Insa in Collingwood

Full of Colour - Bendigo Street

Unfortunately it is all too easy to find street art in and around Melbourne. Turn a corner and you are faced with this:

Bendigo St, Collingwood 01

Photorealism

Photorealism in graffiti

Traditionally graffiti has been associated with lettering and figures, as a walk around Melbourne's inner urban streets and alleys will attest. There are, of course, variations on theme as designs bounce around both the visual and conceptual, and the neural and social networks of the various individuals and groups who participate in graffiti. Ideas grow as they are challenged, influenced and reinterpreted to provide something novel from a syncretism of the old. And to be honest I have come to find tagging by itself a little tedious, even some of the bulbous bi or tri-colour throw-ups without any attending comic characters now tend to fade beyond the blurred edges of my peripheral vision. Instead I find myself drawn to the Pieces such as those of the FYG crew or the larger murals which, thankfully, are numerous and various enough to keep the brain engaged.

In Ma'Claim - Finest Photorealistic Graffiti, it is explained how the graffiti of the HipHop movement spread around the world in a kind of cultural osmosis. As its forms and function were adapted by other groups it began to change and in East Germany the Ma’Claim crew started to produce a photorealistic style that, coupled with arresting wall concepts, soon saw new transformations of graffiti art across the world.

For some beautiful images of Ma'Claim's work see here and here.



Driving down Hoddle Street I catch a glimpse of this image looking down onto the car-park of a maternity clothing outlet called Pea in a Pod.

Sackville St from Hoddle

Parked on Sackville

Zombie Clowns & the Killing of Mahisasur

These images were taken the same morning I jumped the fence of the abandoned factory. They occur just around the back of the factory or, more accurately, just behind Moskkito Restaurant. Pity I did not yet have the 14 mm lens yet, although it is actually a 16 mm lens on the D300s. Bring on the mythical D400 with a full frame sensor I say!

Zombie Clowns Dummett Cres 01

Moving South Down Giannarelli Drive

I felt compelled to purchase a new lens for the camera. As much as a 28 mm focal length is great for a lot of situations, when you find yourself in a narrow alley it becomes difficult to do the graffiti justice. There are many philosophies about just what you are supposed to be achieving when you shoot someone's graffiti. Is it an act of preservation? are we trying to record something that may not be there the next time we come past? If so then how are we to achieve this? I think it is unsupportable to suppose that when we make some kind of record of the world that we are not in some way changing the object that we are recording. I most certainly don't mean this solopsistically or in a Deepak Chopra kind of way, I find his universal consciousness mysticism useful for selling books to people who would do a shit load better if they just bought a book on critical thinking, but for nothing else. No, what I mean is that when I photograph a series of back-to-back pieces like those found here, I am removing them from their context. The experience of them is very different, sure, you can go and look at them your self, but you have not stumbled upon them, the risk of wandering down an unknown alley is removed from the emotion involved in the reading.

Still, I do agree with the notion that I should attempt to remove myself from the images as much as possible, even though I do like to show a bit of context, either by creating a nice one or two point perspective which takes the viewer's eye off in some direction or other, often away from the graffiti. I can see how this would annoy the pure "photography as record" crowd even though in large part I agree with them (the data is always sacred!). And this is indeed what I have attempted here now that my new 14 - 24 mm lens has found its way into my life.

Abandoned Factory in Cliffton Hill

Banksy

It is hard not to become a little too obsessed with street art. Martin Bull writes about a moment when he was passing a London location when he recognised a new Banksy stencil. Jumping up from his seat he pressed the button to stop the bus and made his way back to the stencil's location where he took a series of still images (Banksy Locations & Tours). You can see Banksy's influence almost anywhere you look once the obsession takes hold.

parachute elephant

This "parachute elephant" found on Stanley Street in Collingwood is reminiscent of Banksy's "parachute rat", and just being able to draw the connection stopped me in my tracks, then, for a moment, I belonged to something much larger than myself. I was having a dialogue, a casual chat with with the form of the stenciled image and its message was able to deliver me to other places and the little histories that often go unnoticed and yet provide such abundance of meaning to our lives. One of Banksy's parachute rats was destroyed by workers here in Melbourne. Banksy did not mind; much like the authors of Melbourne's graffiti management plan he recognises the ephemeral nature of the art form.

By its nature, street art within the City of Melbourne is ephemeral - it is not meant to last, the plan states. Archival of works through high-quality photography is a more effective preservation strategy (Article).

Abandoned Factory

At first I sneaked around the back, only to find abandoned spray cans, an enormous array of bottles of various forms of alcohol and a small sharps container for the safe disposal of needles. There was a small window that had obviously been used for comings and goings but I decided to head for the front and jump the fence.

Ironlak Spray Can

217-241 Queens Pde

Around Schots Emporium & Chien Wah Trading

Chien Wah Trading

When we are alerted to something we tend to notice it more often from within the maelstrom of patterns that afflict our minds as we go about our daily lives. Just bought a new car, now you see them everywhere you look, desire a particular pair of shoes, now every shop window is displaying them at discount prices. Obviously the frequency of their random appearance in our lives doesn't change, we can't change the nature of reality just by thinking about it. Rather we have developed a bias for observing and remembering this object, whereas previously our brains will have discarded the information like so much mental flotsam and jetsam.




Although I have driven past the above image some thousand or more times over the last ten years I had never noticed the graffiti looking down on Hoddle Street from the gabled section of the Chien Wah Trading roof. Can you see the "Dolphins"?

Painted Over

Painted Over

Hairy Chin

With the three still faces looking down on this concrete culvert tucked in behind Lygon Street the builders responsible for presenting the newly built apartments have covered over some of the pieces that I had photographed the day before. You can see the missing image here on the left, now covered and never to be seen aside from this image again. It's disappearance from the universe may be less significant than the final breath of the representative of an entire species but it does evoke some kind of response. Something that was created, that stated a brief message read by very few people and then is gone is, to me, reminiscent of the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi.

Down Giannarelli Drive

There are various genres of graffiti and I have no doubt that you will have seen some of the stencil work that some graffiti artists employ. The image below is the only stencil I have happened across so far but I hope to capture and record more. 

Stencil Graffiti

This artist will have cut out the stencils at home using either paper or cardboard or perhaps even plastic. This technique makes for a quick and consistent application of spray paint with the possibility of being able to take ones time over an intricate design. Graffiti is illegal and perhaps the author of the above image viewed themselves as waging some kind of urban warfare against the way we have structured our society. I would ask for instance how the above image might be any more visually or economically offensive than the house that was recently built at the end of my street. 

East Brunswick Graffiti

I like to wander about the streets of East Brunswick late at night or early in the morning. What is busy during the day with lots of people and colour and movement fades into the social recesses and shadows of night. The usual urban activity has fled and it is just me, a few frisky possums or snarling cats, and the graffiti.