Today’s Activity: Documenting Graffiti

Today was Sunday. A day that is difficult to fill with many interesting activities as most things are closed. However, after starting this blog, I decided I should go out and photograph the graffiti in the park across from my building. There is a very long wall that is entirely covered in graffiti. I grabbed my camera and headed to the gym. As I was going there, I started to notice all kinds of things that I had never noticed before. I took some pictures.

Then, when I walked back, I decided to take a different route from my usual one. As I went deeper into one neighborhood, I began to notice a lot of worn graffiti with swastikas and things about fascism. On top of the graffiti were lines through it, anti-fascist terms. However, there were still some swastikas that weren’t worn. As I went away from the area, the swastikas went away. I began to notice the amount of words and symbols dealing with fascism there were all around the city.

After this, I headed to the park. There was more graffiti than I had ever realized. I had walked past it before when I was returning from my walk but had never really taken the time to look at it. I took about 50 pictures of it- and very few of them were repeat pictures. I began to notice the same tags (meaning, the alias of the graffiti artist). Some of them I had noticed in other areas, some I hadn’t. Some of the work was actually quite impressive.

I began to wonder who these graffiti artists were. When had they done this? One piece said something along the lines of “I beat 2007″. There was also a lot of English. I had heard people partying in the park last night, so I figured when I headed over there this morning that there might be some new graffiti. I’m not sure if it was new or not, but it was interesting.

Later in the evening, as the sun was going down, I was full from lunch and decided to take another walk. I headed out with my camera and decided to wander around the area with my camera and look for more graffiti. The more I really looked at the names, the clearer it became as to which artists were from the area and which ones were the best. I wasn’t surprised that this park had so much graffiti because there is a shop right across from my building that sells graffiti cans. They must make a mint off of these kids/young adults.

I wonder if these kids/young adults live with their families or on their own? Are they from Italy? It would be a bit difficult to live with your family while accumulating cans. On the other hand, maybe they just go buy it on the day of. I don’t know. I really wanted to find this “Donut” character and find out about him. Is he an artist? Because he really should be.

I have more than 130 pictures of graffiti so far. I’m pretty sure I have more on my hard drive at home, too.

Here are some of my favorites from today:

If the picture above isn’t loading for you, double-click it. It will open another window– it’s quite impressive and worth taking the time to look at.

You can see the rest if you go to the vertical box and click “More Photos”.

Peace!

Me.