Photographing Graffitti

[jamesb]

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Could be your outlook!<br>

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/6074897-md.jpg"><br>

Don't fall for drab auto-flagellation

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[frank uhlig]

I think the best advice was the one by Bob Bernard, given first: Get a camera and shoot some graffiti. The rest of our advice is just confusing and simplistic.

 

Or did you have any specific questions on this most simple of assignment?

[Alex_Es]

What you need to do first is to find a theme. Do this: Write a title for your project. A title

really gets you focused. Next write an abstract of about two or three hundred words about

your project. Once you have theme firmly in your head you'll have a better feeling for what

you are shooting and why you are shooting it.

 

It is a fact that graffiti has been over-photographed. But that should not be a problem.

There is always new graffiti and therefore a new angle.

[will_obrien1]

South Boston <p>

 

<img src ="http://obrienphoto.net/img/imgp0130.jpg">

[robert_m_johnson]

"I think the best advice was the one by Bob Bernard, given first: Get a camera and shoot some graffiti. The rest of our advice is just confusing and simplistic."

 

Yes

[Uhooru]

Don't listen to any of this, just start shooting it, get stuff back, look at it and shoot some more. You'll start to get an idea of what you want. It helps if you are where there is lots of it. Just look at your work and see what appeals. Maybe try it in different light. Its your assignment. If it helps, look at what others have done. I don't see a lot of it where I live, but some here do a lot. Some here have web sites.

Check out Brad's he incorporates a good amount of grafitti in his work. Did you teacher show you slides of others work in the class? Or is this just your self-chosen assignment? Anyways, have fun.

 

<img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/142/324717340_3da5f3c0a9_o.jpg">

[Uhooru]

Also, if you haven't, just google graffiti and look at the images there's millions, or......don't look at anything but what you're doing so you get completely your own take..that's another way. Just start, review, refine.

[Uhooru]

Brad's reching hand and his others, Jeff, Eugene, Robert J, James B, Bill o' B all cool stuff. I do love the look of the stuff. Not sure I want it on my car,but it is amazing stuff.

[Uhooru]

sorry Clive, like yours too, in fact pretty much all of this stuff is fascinating.

[petemillis]

Jonathon said ""It was going to happen anyway and I was just taking pictures" is a valid defense, but it's a defense you may have to raise if you're swept up with the vandals."

 

There is another way to deal with this - you photograph lots of grafitti, lots of people doing it, you get caught with them by the police, yo go to the station and you explain you were "gathering evidence" and pick up a nice big reward to buy another lens!

[mike dixon]

And then you collect a brick in the head for being a rat. I'd be cautious when trying to photograph people engaged in any illegal activity.

[petemillis]

Mike, I agree! Photographing any illegal activity really is dodgy especially now we have kids who are aspiring to be "gansta" and running around with guns. It's easy to imagine photographing a group of teenagers having a smoke and a laugh without realising they're passing drugs, then one of them pulling out a handgun. And also, if you knowingly photograph illegal activity (say grafitti taking place) are you now then witholding evidence? Sometimes it's best not to know who did something and to just appreciate (or not) the grafitti for what it is.

 

Jonathon Davis's idea of photographing grafitti being undone is interesting. You should be able to find out through the local authority details of where and when clean-up efforts will be taking place. You could document the clean-up from start to finish, and then a few hours later you should be able to photograph more grafitti that has taken its place.

 

Finally, keep an eye out in obscure places for grafitti. Sometimes it is out of sight of the casual observer, but this almost hidden grafitti is often really simple with a good message. Like this...

http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/6236454-lg.jpg

[Uhooru]

What happened to the photographer who did the Kansas City series of drugees, I'm sorry forget his name. But that was tough phography and I don't think he ever got arrested. Of course if the cops had raided the place, then who knows.

 

As for graffitti, its so prevalent in a lot cities, that you don't have to do anything special to find it. Like in San Francisco, half the trucks, any construction site, many walls, have been decorated.

No need to catch em doing it, unless you want to.

 

<img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1291/1070138736_bc6c60fb93.jpg?v=0">

 

<img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1053/1049137044_5c0f359b3e.jpg?v=0">

[rj_putter]

<center><img src="http://img1.aminus4.com/g0002/u00001744/i00032734/hello_aminus3_03-03_large.jpg"></center><br>

[john falkenstine]

This..is actually a great collection of images. A good mini-book.

[Spearhead]

<i>What happened to the photographer who did the Kansas City series of drugees, I'm sorry forget his name.</i><p>Larry Clark. I don't think he was an outsider though, I think they were mostly his friends. However, some great photographs have come from working with people in criminal activity. If the photographers didn't work with them, nobody would know about what it was like, and that would be really sad for photography. Take a look at the work of Joseph Rodriguez, for example.<p>

 

Me, I would tag along (haha) if I had the opportunity.

[petemillis]

Just pinched this from PAvement Magazine

"-- bio --

Larry Clark was born in 1943 and grew up in Oklahoma. He nows in live in New York City with his three kids; one 26 and two younger boys, 17 and 13. Fifty-two years of age now and still obsessed with youth, he can purportedly be seen skateboarding with the 14- and 15-year-olds in Washington Square Park or at Brooklyn Banks. He is the one with the graying ponytail and the custom skateboard with a picture of a young girl, naked, her rear in the air, her genitals exposed...

 

text plagiarized from more sources than possible to identify "

 

I guess this was written in 1995 as it refers to his date of birth as 1943 and mentions that he is 52! - maybe he's still boarding today!

[Uhooru]

Thanks Jeff, that was the name I was looking for. But was he sharing their lifestyle (shooting up) too or just there documenting what was becoming of his childhood friends. I got the sense that he wasn't exactly on the same life path they were. I just remember that was some of the most powerful imagery I have ever seen. Hard to look at but so revealing.

[jtdnyc]

Addicts are going to shoot up whether you are there to see it or not. Graffiti writers, on the other hand, are attention-seekers and may behave differently simply because they are being observed. Thus the issue arises, even when you think you are only documenting, are you in some sense participating?

 

Ever see pictures of a demonstration in a non-English-speaking country in which the placards are in English? Would the placards have been the same if there hadn't been US/UK cameras there to "document" the demo? Would the demo have happened at all?

 

The OP said he has been given a documentary photography assignment. He has received a lot of good advice on the photographic aspect, as well as many excellent exacmples. My point, however, deals with the "documentary" aspect; specifically, on the photographer's responsibility to be aware that the act of photography may affect the subject of the documentation.

 

I'll never forget an experience I had about twenty years ago. I saw two kids about 14 years of age come into the old Scribner's bookstore on Fifth Avenue and ask for a picture book on graffiti that had just been published. These were street kids; they looked and acted as if they'd never been a bookstore before in their lives. While getting them into a bookstore for any reason at all was probably a good thing, I couldn't help but suspect that the documentation of their (or their idols') handiwork would only lead to more graffiti in the future.

[Spearhead]

<i>Thus the issue arises, even when you think you are only documenting, are you in some sense participating?</i><p>The gang photographer I mentioned has been around some serious crime. If he walked away when things started happening, he wouldn't have the trust. He has seen stuff much more serious than graffiti.

<p>A different subject - there is graffiti in Pompeii that dates back to when the city was alive. I couldn't find it, but I know it is still on some of the building. It may not be accessible with the way it's set up now.

[cw_wright]

Graffiti rules.

[petemillis]

Rules of Graffiti - interesting article on what qualifies graffiti as art.. http://www.graffiti.org/faq/stowers.html

[sprouty]

Graffiti is best enjoyed drunk...<div></div>

[hirere_ngamoki]

Thanks for all the amazing feedbak and to Rob Bernhard thats good advice....that would be how I capture graffiti, I just needed a little advice :D

[alejandrog]

check out BANKSY graffitti art. WOOOOORD!!!!