23-MAY-2010
Caboose, Nevada City, Montana, 2010
The Great Northern Railway is no more. Yet its flaking emblem still clings to the side wall of a decaying caboose near the ghost town of Nevada City. The trademark is cut asunder down the middle, just as the Great Northern itself, which merged with two other railroads to form the Burlington, Great Northern, and Santa Fe. I include a window off to the left, reflecting the clawed branches of nearby dead trees. It adds a ghostly context. Amazingly, the colors of the Great Northern are still vivid. The red and orange paint lingers, a reminder of the railroad’s best days.
21-NOV-2009
Happy Thanksgiving, The Westward Ho, Phoenix, Arizona, 2009
The once luxurious Westward Ho Hotel now provides low-income housing to seniors, many of them living alone. I often take my tutorial students to shoot here, because it offers so many contrasting visual elements. In this case, the wall of its elevator lobby is decorated with a cheerful salute to the Thanksgiving holiday, yet it has been placed right next to a permanent sign designed to keep residents from “loitering.” The two signs clash within the frame of my image, which encloses them side by side above an empty wooden chair. The contrast between the signs is incongruous – the larger, more colorful Thanksgiving sign offers a pleasurable sentiment. The slightly askew “No Loitering” sign warns people not to stand or wait around the elevator lobby just to pass the time. The verb “loiter” also connotes improper or sinister motives, diluting much of the good will intended by the Thanksgiving salute. This wall speaks, but it seems to speak at cross-purposes.
14-NOV-2009
Petroglyphs, Newspaper Rock, Monticello, Utah, 2009
Over 2,000 years of man’s activities are recorded on this rock. Rather than try to embrace the entire rock, I concentrate here on only a few of the petroglyphs – those that are inscribed on the rock with the greatest sense of texture and flow. There is a strong diagonal thrust to this image, which animates the figures and makes them seem about to move.
13-NOV-2009
The chase, Moab, Utah, 2009
One of the most bizarre murals I have seen covers an entire side of the Poison Spider Bicycle Shop in downtown Moab. There is a fence between the wall and a gas station parking lot. This fence offers a layer of reality that brings the fantasy to life. A giant spider steps out from behind a curiously shaped rock and gives chase to four cyclists speeding away behind that fence. My image includes not only this wall that speaks, but the upper front section of the bike shop as well.
21-OCT-2009
Love letter, Bucharest, Romania, 2009
The wall itself is a study in decay, part of the crumbling core of Old Bucharest. Yet someone still loves the place, at least according to the torn poster. The strange figure in the cartoon has company as well, a disintegrating caricature with no arms, a soaring mustache, and a toothy grin. Seen together on a layered wall of decay, they make an incongruous set of local boosters.
21-SEP-2009
Underpass, Montreal, Canada, 2009
This underpass serves as a makeshift home for a number of homeless people in Montreal. They have left their marks on its walls – graffiti that expresses their sense of identity and purpose. Perhaps that purpose is just to get through another day – that may be why a white chalk line runs along the walls and through the arches. I used a 14mm wideangle lens to make this image, coming as close as I could to the arch, yet still including the litter on the ground and adding dimension by reaching through the arch into the next vault, where someone has left graffiti that itself is dimensional in form.
23-SEP-2009
Graffiti Alley, Toronto, Canada, 2009
Is graffiti art or defacement? It depends on its context. In Toronto, building owners along Queen Street welcome the city’s graffiti artists to paint their walls – at least those that face the alley in the rear. Graffiti Alley runs just south of Queen Street from Spadina to Portland – about a kilometer’s worth of real estate. Each summer for the last few years a group called “style in progress” has taken over the alley for 24 hours of legal painting. The result is spectacular, as this image implies. I thank pbase photographer Jude Marion, (judespics) who spent an afternoon shooting with me in Toronto, and took me to this place. She says it also has become a mecca for local photographers. I can see why.
16-MAY-2008
History in words, Angels Camp, California, 2008
Angels Camp is one of California’s most historic mining towns. It was at the heart of the Gold Rush, and it was here that Mark Twain first heard the story of the jumping frog that he would eventually write about. His words would make the town world famous. I found other words here – words lathered on a brick wall in an alley. There are layer upon layer of signs here, reaching from today, back into the long history of this colorful place. And so I made this richly colored image, filled with words and partial words and fragments of words that together create a historical quilt that can carry us back to other days and other times.
03-APR-2008
Bound for school, Aleppy, India, 2008
A pair of Islamic boys head for school in Aleppy, the last stop on our cruise through Kerala’s tropical backwaters. Kerala has the second highest literacy rate (90%) among India’s states. The walls of Kerala and much of India are covered in posters, past and present. Those with heads on them are almost always from past elections. These boys may take no notice of them, but these walls speak of a society where communication is open and reading is taken for granted.
18-DEC-2007
Drips and masks, Hanoi, Vietnam, 2007
I thought the effect of the dripping paint and masked figure worked well together. The drips come from a hastily stenciled phone number for the contractor who once made repairs to this Hanoi building. The mask is intended to combat the air pollution that plagues all of Vietnam's cities. These stenciled numbers are seen all over Asia – it is as if the walls themselves are letting us know who last came to fix them.
08-NOV-2007
White House Ruin, Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, 2007
This ruin, built by ancient Puebloan people within a cave on the canyon wall, is over 1,000 years old. If you view this image at full size, you can read some “recent” graffiti left on its white plastered wall, some of it dating back more than 130 years. This image casts its spell only when we notice those carvings. Casual tourists did not leave these names and dates. Just getting to this place must have been an accomplishment. Knowing this, the old graffiti becomes a symbol of endurance rather than vandalism. Today, this cliff house is off-limits. We can look, but not touch. We are left to live the story of this place through the autographs of its long dead visitors.
08-JUL-2007
Rusty fire escape, Denver, Colorado, 2007
Graffiti artists have used this fire escape as their road to expression. Their embellished logos and pleas to be heard cover the lower story of this abandoned apartment house but are limited to the areas around the rusty fire escape as it climbs to the third story. The rusted metal and boarded windows tell us that this building is no longer being maintained. It has become a community bulletin board that communicates various identities in vividly expansive explosions of paint. The fire escape was once intended to save lives. Today, it has become a sounding board.