Well, Thessaloniki has a long and distinguished ancient history taking in Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman civilisations. And what do I show you first? Street art – and one graffito. From the sublime …
For Marsha’s Photographing Public Art Challenge
It was in Berlin that I first really discovered a love of Street Art. Maybe it’s because I got some background understanding by going out for the afternoon with Dave, of Alternative Berlin Tours. I learnt the difference between graffiti, street art, stickers and transfers, and something of the political anger and activism that can inform so much of it: particularly near the former Berlin Wall. This has now been re-invented as The East Side Gallery and I don’t show anything of that here because many of its images are so well known. Here are some examples we saw in Dave’s company, or exploring later on our own.
Having done Street Art Module One in Berlin, I was ready a year or so later to do Module Two in Valencia, It was here that I met an irrepressible type who peoples doorways and random bits of street furniture, painted by David de Limón.
And it was here too, as we once had in Seville, that we encountered street artists doing their day – or occasionally night – job.
Here are a few more:
And here’s one just for Past Squares …
And we’ll have a whistle-stop tour of Spain and view a few more:
Maybe this is my favourite image of all, a bit of fun created from damaged plasterwork in Seville:
Although – hang on – no. My real favourite has got to be in Manor House Gardens, Hither Green, because the artist appears to have designed this image with my granddaughter in mind.
With thanks to Patti for providing us with a chance to wander city streets this week in quest of images that amuse, provoke and stimulate us. It’s the perfect moment to join the Photographing Public Art Challenge too. As well as Monday Mural. All this and Past Squares and Monday Window too … This is taking multi-tasking to a new level.
The header image comes from the top floor of an apartment block in Málaga.
I told you about the railway line in Premià de Mar the other day. Nowadays, a number of underpasses beneath the road and railway link the town to its beaches. And quite a few of them are painted with scenes of the town, and with life above and below the surface of the ocean.
Palm trees march along portions of the shoreline, so let’s begin with an image of one from an underpass:
And here’s the main square, with the parish church of Sant Cristofol.
There’s more street art, some of it more interesting, in the streets above. I’ll save those for later.
It was back to work as usual for Team Barcelona on Monday, so we left them to it and came to Valencia.
It’s lovely to be back, revisiting old haunts from last November, and making fresh discoveries. Pottering down streets in long-established communities is the best: grand imposing doorways; delicately wrought balconies; elegant stucco. Or these days, street art. Here are a few examples I snapped this afternoon.
Berlin is the home of street art and creative graffiti. If you’ve been following my posts, you’ll already have glimpsed the East Side Gallery: though that is planned and curated.
Away from the city centre, street art is so much a part of Berlin life that walking tour companies vie with each other to show visitors the edgiest and grittiest current manifestations of this vibrant art form. Even big companies climb on the band wagon. Back in the early years of this century, Nike paid for this piece.
Somehow, global companies making use of a movement powered from the bottom up seems slightly to be missing the point.
Using spray cans; re-purposed fire extinguishers; transfers from images shot in night clubs, applied to city walls then doused in glitter, street artists come out at dead of night to brighten up favourite haunts. Bands of graffiti artists have thousands of followers on YouTube.
You, like me, can simply be a curious pedestrian in the streets of Berlin. Can you spot the example of yarn bombing?
This is a response to this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge: ‘Pedestrian’.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
You must be logged in to post a comment.