"We are unaware that the city walls are alive with its social drama. We don’t hear the intricate commentaries they have to offer us about the lives, relationships and identities of those who wrote them. And why should we even care? Because…this drama, these commentaries and the vibrant subculture that lies behind them have a great deal to tell us about the culture we live in and some of the people who share it with us." ~ Nancy MacDonald, The Graffiti Subculture: Youth, Masculinity and Identity in London and New York.
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| After the riot, Vancouver 2010 |
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| Gibsons, 2017 |
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| Venice Beach, California, 2018 |
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| Burnaby, 2015 |
I've always had a fascination with graffiti. Maybe it's related to my background in design--certainly graffiti is font design writ large on the landscape. And maybe it's in the subversion--that the graffiti writer/designer uses space, time (as in train graffiti), and governance as elements of the communication. Graffiti must be observed within the context that it is public, ephemeral, and illegal. So, maybe it's that it's anti-capitalist. Bradley Bartolomeo writes that “Graffiti writing is one of the easiest and most efficient ways for individuals and opposing groups to register political dissidence, express social alienation, propagate anti-system ideas, and establish an alternative collective memory."
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