Homeless on the streets of USA

The top photo l took about 20 years ago in SOHO, NYC and included in my book "Below 14th Street" as a way of showing, in the biggest, liberal city, even in it's hip-chic areas, people were in desperation, living on handouts, and on the street; the bottom photo l lifted from the south Florida newspaper SunSentinel, today, under the headline (front page) "S. Florida struggles with the homeless.... the bad economy continues to push more and more people into the streets." And, of course, this is the situation throughout our country, then, and especially now. Have you heard any politicians talk about, much less offer solutions. (See debates on extension of unemployment payments, reductions in Medicaid, etc. how much the rich should have to pay to help cover the needs of the poor, sick, homeless...maybe an extra 3 or 4% of their earnings over $250, 000/yr.) l have to say l'm becoming more and more ashamed of this country's...my country's... growing heartlessness. l don't even want to get started on the tragedy in Tuscon. l am sticking here closer to this blogs' original raison d'etre. after all, where do you tend to find the most graffiti, but in the most distressed, most under cared for urban neighborhoods, places you'd likely see the homeless. (see street scene below)

not your "nice neighborhood" street

A STREET SCENE I 'D RATHER NOT SEE

Don't like to write too much without pictures, and thought this would be most appropriate as a lead to my next blog, soon, on the places most street art in the sense of graf is found...the ghettos of the world.

Exit Through The Gift Shop

If you haven't seen the movie of the title above, and you are interested in the contemporary art world and/or graffiti...see it. l bring it up now because of a recent news story in the NYTimes about it, one of many l've read about it. It is presented as a documentary on the contemporary street art/graffiti  scene, and there is some good documentary footage on how the graf artists ....some of them... create, and where & how. it seems to me to also be a put-on about who is creating under whose name. the key manipulator is probably Banksy, the most highly regarded of street artists, at the moment...and it's been out about a year...anyway, there have been many articles about the film, particularly about it's truthfulness. now the producers including Banksy are being sued by someone who wants credit for work on the film he didn't get. (l've sometimes been accused of the same thing). whether a put on or not - the movie is a great commentary on the art world...l recommend it.

one more thing: this movie supposedly portrays the incredible functioning of a street art follower/photographer which to a large extent is what l am, the guy writing this blog. and, where he supposedly started in 1999 (mentioned in the movie) that was the publishing date of my first book of street art, after 20 years of producing the photos in it, most of which you can see at www.sohobooks.net. Be back, soon.

what's street art photography IV

previously, the "street art" photos shown on this blog contained graphics created by street ("graffiti") artists...and indicated the difference between street art and street art photography. above are 4 more examples of street art photography of a somewhat different sort. BTW the top two color pix were taken in amsterdam, the bottom two in nyc, i.e.,christopher st. and "chinatown". so let's see...street art...art in the streets...street art photography...taking pictures of what is already on the streets, everywhere and any where. so, that's the point, as has often been said, art is everywhere around us, ready to be seen, ready to be photographed, and the better the photographer, the more he is able to see and frame a scene in the most interesting and communicative way. 

ok. so "graffiti observer" is about graffiti, but also about other street art, and about street photography, and life on streets...and life. you and l are the graffiti observers, and what we have seen, and have to tell about, might well be included here; what ever.

what's street art photography III

(just getting used to how to design this blog, so unused to the beginning at the bottom and how to place the graphics on my posts.) BTW the last graphic shown was taken several years ago in Miami and won 1st place in the 2008 Boca Raton Museum of Art Art Guild open art competition; the previous 4 graphics were created and photographed in Miami in the past month; and, as you can see, the header of the very 1st blog post derives from the last graphic shown. in my next blog post, l'll show a very different type of street art photography.

what's street art photography II

what's street art photography

the 4 images above are a type of "street art" often called graffiti, essentially graphics created on exterior walls, often without, sometimes with, the permission of the owner of the walls. if, on the basis of my first post, you went to my main street art website - www.sohobooks.net - you'd see hundreds more of this type of street art. and what you are looking at is street art photography; in most of the images, the street graphics are in the midst of a street scene, including streets, signs, doorways, street litter, and the like, all framed by the photographer's eye. and the way a photographer frames the whole scene, or even a part of a street graphic, can make the photo a work of art. (the graphic used to introduce my first blog post is a very small section of an enormous wall graphic and has a valued life of it's own. see the graphic it derives from below.)

what's street art

the resurrection of graffiti observer

from 1999 to 2005 a monthly e-zine called "graffiti observer" ran on a website developed to feature the street art photography of bob edelson - www.sohobooks.net . one month's article  - "miami art massacre" about a district in miami that had fabulous graf that got whitewashed....went viral, and it made the home of the "observer" one of the most popular graf sites on the web. that was almost 10 years ago. yet,  just the other day, l saw the article on www.citynoise.org with the statistic that over 35,000 had viewed the article on their website. that, together with a recent burst of articles about graffiti, graffiti artists, and many new exhibitions of  graffiti, l decided it was a good time to create a blog pertaining to this and other forms of  art.btw, the unedited version of "miami art massacre" still exists in the archives of the site that originated it. NOW should l say l saw it coming - the growing popularity of street art.YES. my book "new american street art" was published 1999, when many said it was a passe art form, but the book took off, around the world, and many more graf books followed. in my travels through europe in recent years, l saw the streets filled with street art. there is no doubt it is at its popularity height, throughout the world. in my next blog l will discuss a specific aspect...street art photography.