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, GoreB, 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.