Street art

I love to see and to photograph street art, although I feel it poses a couple of challenges. Firstly, when judging graffiti, where is the line where vandalism crosses over into art? And secondly, when judging a photo of street art, are we really assessing the skill of the photographer, or of the original artist?

On the first point, I think we can look at two factors. While the appeal of art is very subjective, generally it’s possible to recognise elements of creativity, imagination and originality – and conversely, to recognise the lack of these in a piece of pure vandalism. But location also plays a part – was the artist invited to create a work of art on this wall? Is it in an area put aside for this purpose? If not, has the piece diminished or added to the attractiveness of a street scene?

I believe all the photos I will share in this blog entry tick at least one of the ‘is it art?’ qualifiers. As to whether they are good photos or simple accurate records of ‘good’ art, I will leave you to judge – but sometimes a straightforward record shot is worth sharing too!

Valparaiso

I want to start here, on Chile’s Pacific coast, as it is one of the best cities I have ever visited for street art. But as I have already blogged about a day trip here elsewhere on this site (Valley of Paradise), do feel free to skip these first photos!

Valparaiso is famous for its neighbourhoods of colourful houses that spill down the hillsides towards the port. They are a magnet for artists, for photographers, for writers and are especially known for the street art that adorns many of the buildings, which was one of the main things that attracted us here. No doubt this started unofficially, and just here and there, but today it is a major feature of the city, helped by a tolerant city council who overlook the fact that graffiti and street art are illegal in Chile and have ensured that there are no regulations that explicitly outlaw it .

Instead it is widely accepted and even welcomed by local businesses such as cafés and shops, who recognise that it will attract visitors. Many owners nowadays will commission street artists to create a design for their wall, while many artists who spot a likely wall space will pitch their ideas to the owner and collaborate to produce a design with which both are happy.

Most of my photos were taken on the streets of Cerro Concepción, one of the designated historic areas known as a zona típica, but you find similar in many other parts of the city.

Lisbon

Portugal seems to be more tolerant than most cities of graffiti, and many examples found in Lisbon might be judged to be on the wrong side of the vandalism/art divide, but I’ve always found plenty to admire here too. Much of the graffiti here is created with the use of stencils – the Barrio Alto and Alfama districts are the best places to search. In recent years there has been increased interest in creating street art on a much larger scale, covering whole buildings, as in the last example here (taken on our most recent visit in 2013).

Faro

In Faro too, which I visited with Virtual Tourist friends in 2016, I found some colourful examples of street art:

Riga

This is another city I discovered through Virtual Tourist when a meeting was organised here in 2014. I liked it so much I went back the next year with Chris. Architecturally it is perhaps most famous for its Art Nouveau district, but the more working class and somewhat scruffy area known as Latgale or Maskavas forštate (Moscow District) is also appealing photographically speaking, and has the best examples of street art – most, though not all, of these photos were taken there on those two trips.

Berlin

Perhaps the best-regulated display of street art is the East Side Gallery in Berlin. There are several places in that city where stretches of the once infamous Wall remain. Some are left much as they were, one at least showing the signs of destruction caused by the assault by local people when finally they brought the Wall down. But on the banks of the Spree near the Ostbahnhof is a stretch that has been restored and decorated with a series of murals by artists from all over the world. And whereas in the period of the city’s division the decorative graffiti was confined to the western side of the wall, now it is the eastern side that is both colourful and, at times, political.

The 1.3 km stretch was turned into this informal open-air gallery soon after the fall of the Wall, in 1990, and completely restored, with new art-works, in 2009 to mark the 20 year anniversary of that event. There are 106 works in total, and it claims to be the largest open-air art gallery in the world. Much of the art work on display will stimulate and remind you of the events of 1989, as well as raising some challenging questions perhaps about on-going conflict in our world – although a few pieces seem to be just for fun. My photos show a selection of the works I liked best when we visited in 2011, soon after this restoration.

But street art in Berlin isn’t confined to the East Side Gallery – here are a couple of pieces from trendy neighbourhoods Scheunenviertal and Prenzlauer Berg.

Some other examples

As some of the photos above show, I like to include people in my street art shots, to give perspective and bring the scene to life. Here are a few more random examples of this:

In Liège

Newcastle / Gateshead

But I don’t have to travel far to find good street art! We make several visits each year to Chris’s home town of Newcastle and I always carry a camera when out and about in this very photogenic city. In recent years the area around Ouseburn just east of the city centre has been developed as a focal point for artists, creative businesses and similar, and is a great place to find interesting street art.

London

But perhaps the best place I know for street art is my home city of London – or maybe I just know where best to look for it here? Certainly I have a surfeit of examples that I could share, so here is just a (perhaps rather large!) selection: