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.



These images start at the far Northern end of this building and move south until they turn the above corner and head East.

Perch

FYG

The FYG crew do a lot of these pieces and I have come to recognise their work rather quickly. Note Lisa's signature here and her piece below.

SLACK

Lisa's Signature

Lisa's signature again on another FYG piece.

Robert

This is similar to the other piece by Robert found in the abandoned factory. Just today I caught a glimpse of more FYG work down Sydney Road.

Lisa

Recognise the above name?

Lost Kids

The above image is obviously more a throw up than a piece but I really like the "Lost Kids" name. I wonder if they derived this name from the "Lost Boys" of Peter Pan fame, only deciding to be a bit more inclusive of course. I have never seen Peter Pan graffiti before but the convergence strikes me as being very apt. Peter Pan is an expression of childhood play, the kind of play that takes very little account for the rules and regulations of adulthood. The lost boys (Peter explains that girls are far too clever to get lost) came to Neverland as a consequence of being neglected by the adults who were meant to be caring for them, they were lost both in the sense of not knowing what to do and in having been lost by those responsible for them.