David Majchrzak

10/15/2012

Art of the Street

I wanted to analyze a photo essay that would relate to

what I will be doing myself after analyzing this. I found this photo

essay that had street art mainly in New York and a few from

some parts of Europe. It is called ‘Art of the Street’ and it was

published on Time’s website. They do not give credit to a

certain author or photographer for putting together this

collaboration or when it was published but in every photo they

give credit to each individual artist with their artwork.

I was looking at some other photo essays that had street art photography in their

essay but they did not say who the artists were. That leaves a huge disconnection from

what you are viewing and the sole purpose of what the artist was trying to imply

through his artwork. In that case it leaves the essay to let you use your implications of

what you think the artist is trying to show, compared to the photo essay I am analyzing

which lets you dig deeper into the meaning of the artist works. It shows more factual

information which gives truth behind each photo.

The first photo they decided to go with was

the picture of a cyclist that has the sense of it

moving. It is not so much the photo that I like on

how it starts the essay off with but the meaning behind this artist’s reason of why he

does street art. WK Interact does street art so that the public can view it for free. Street

art symbolizes ‘freedom’ according to him which sets a good tone for the rest of the

essay. It shows that these artists do it for the people and not for money.

The photographers

that capture these photos

of artwork use focal point

almost in every one but

with the touch of other

photo compositions such

as rule of thirds, positive

and negative space,

leading lines and the use of color as well. I like this photo here because the artist, Gore-

B, made his artwork all black and white so the photographer got a close-up photo of it

to make it a positive and negative photo. Since it is a close-up it is hard to tell the size of

the artwork but since it was done on a surface of concrete blocks which we all are

familiar with, so it gives a sense of scale.

These ranges of photos give a great detail

of understanding that street art is not limited to

just spray painting on some brick wall. The artists

will portray their artwork on places that are not

safe to get to or illegal in that matter. They will

post it on the edge of bridges, on the top of roofs,

sides of doors and electrical boxes, billboards and even streets signs. It shows no

limitations to these artists, that nothing is holding them back. The author also shows a

range of the artists’ medium choice, from using spray paint, airbrush, paint, with the

help of stencils or simply free-handing it. They

also used objects such as bricks and

concrete, or some artists produced steel and

iron sculptures. Like I said, the author of this

photo essay captures the range of street art

in all levels.

All the images in the essay are realistic images, and all the text is factual

information so everything here correlates to the realistic side of the McCloud’s triangle.

All the lighting in these photos is being lit up by natural light to give it that natural feel to

the photos. They do not play too much with shadows on much of the artwork. They

waited around so that the artwork could be easily seen by the camera shot. For the

most part they left the background and people out of the picture except for two of

them. In this picture it gives you a point of view of what it like to be up on the roof with

the artist but I really like how they left

the shot of the skyline in the

background. All the lines in the photo

are being pointed, using leading lines,

towards the skyline showing that Kelly

Burns is representing his city and Kelly

does this for the people of the city.

By looking at this photo it is hard to tell

what the photographer wants you to focus on

since there is so much going on. The natural light

rests on the bottom left of the door focusing in on

that to emphasize that part. Without the text you

do not know who the artist is, what the location

is, and what the artists thought is on their artwork.

Now we know this photo was taken in Berlin, that

the artists name is Faile, and that they are a

group of people and one of female artists even

states that she does this so that people can

spend time thinking about it. Like they want to

public to take a break from their worries and focus on their art. This photo essay allows

for a better understanding of what street art really means to the people and the artists

themselves.

It is hard to tell if the author from Time used Photoshop or other programs to

manipulate the photos in any way but if they did it looks very minimal. Either they had a

nice camera that naturally picks up great contrast, detail and color or they may have

tweaked it a tad bit just to give it more life. Almost all the photos are taken from a point

of view in the case that it gives you a good feeling as if you are there viewing it yourself.

They also leave out other distracting objects away from the artwork so that while

viewing this essay yourself you can sit and ponder over what these artists are trying to

get their message across for. Which is what they want you to do, so I think this author

did capture that essence which the artists wants from us.

What I thought was a little different is when you show a project of some

sort, you usually show the best of what you have. Showing the most recognizable or

most famous piece of information so it relates more to the readers, but what this author

does is shows the average or the most basic artwork out there. They do not show the

most popular street art, the artwork that everyone has a hat of or what they have seen

in the most popular documentary by streets artists. They show the more realistic sides of

artwork, the ones that the people see the most ones of. Not the ones everyone is so

well-known of, the artwork that symbolizes their work in its entirety and not the ones that

only know the artist by its most famous piece of work.

Most of the photo essays I was looking at had some sort of transition or timeline

throughout the essay, or some sort

of beginning, middle and end. This

was not the case looking through

this photo essay, seeming there

were no dates on the photos or

some description saying this is from

the earlier times of street art. This is

a collaboration of street art from all

over New York, Los Angeles and some parts of Europe throughout the most recent years

of our decade. I think they are just showing that a photo essay does not rely on

information such as dates and a good timeline to get your point across. All in all, it is a

great photo essay that shows explicit amounts of artwork that show a great range of

the skill of street art.