A week ago I posted a photo of a “silver” – a type of graffiti executed with silver paint. The photo didn’t show the whole piece, just a detail, a detail where you see nothing but silver paint and the surface on which it is painted. I thought I’d post another such detail. Notice that this one isn't entirely silver. You can see bits of green and orange and lots of black, but the silver predominates:
No, I don’t intend to post one of these every Friday, but I’ll post one or three more.
Why?
Why?
So you can see the texture, which is a big part of the experience when you view graffiti in situ. But it is lost when you look at pictures in a book, even the best pictures in the most carefully printed books. The picture will measure a few inches by a few inches, but it will depict a surface that measures a few feet by a few feet, if not yards by yards. When you “compress” that much surface to a printable size, the texture of the surface is lost. Texture is important.
Of course, the point can be made with other details, perhaps even more drammatically. Notice the crude mortar between the bricks:
Or I could have used a multi-colored detail, but then the colors might have distracted you from the surface itself:
But I chose, for whatever reason, to start with something simple, a bit of silver. That way there’s little to distract you from the surface itself.
Larger versions of these images are available at my Flicker site: top, middle, and bottom, respectively.
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