Photograffeur

The last few weeks I've been gearing up to leave for Chile on Nov. 1.

I'll be spending my first month or so in Valparaíso (for those who don't speak Spanish, it translates to "Go to Paradise"), a smaller satellite city of Santiago, famous for its shipping port, probing thinkers, poets...and graffiti.

Valparaíso

Salvador Allende, the Americas' first democratically-elected Marxist president, first used mural art in his presidential campaign against Eduardo Frei in 1963. With its ability to reach out to the masses in a compelling and cost-effective manner, the street art that first emblazoned Valparaíso's Avenida España ushered in a popular movement that continues to probe issues of human rights and class inequality to this day. The last time I was in Valparaíso a friend told me the movement was jump-started by art students at the university looking for a place to paint. They asked the city council if they could take to the streets - now it's hard to find a stretch of calle untouched by street artists. It's become a tradition literally inked into the social fabric and structural skeleton of this storied city.

Even in times when freedom of speech was silenced through repression, the streets of Chile's port town hummed with emotion - clandestinely keeping the military government in check with images highlighting unemployment, starvation, and torture.

Graffiti is ephemeral - the walls of a city a canvas that is constantly changing to reflect fragments of the social mood.

It is individual in its undertaking and in its consumption (we all walk different avenidas, calles, magus and take in what we choose), but also collective in its participation - one could argue that graffiti forms some of the world's first social and participatory social media now being harnessed by twitter, facebook, wikipedia. It's free, often anonymous. It's open to the public - a collective museum stripped of its admission fee.

J R Wrinkles of the City, Shanghai 2010

Recent winner of TED's One Wish to Save the World grant, is graffit artist J R - self-proclaimed photograffeur (graffeur - graffiti in french) J R. Here's a quick lowdown from TED's website on his work and process:

"JR creates pervasive art that spreads uninvited on buildings of Parisian slums, on walls in the Middle East, on broken bridges in Africa or in favelas in Brazil. People in the exhibit communities, those who often live with the bare minimum, discover something absolutely unnecessary but utterly wonderful. And they don’t just see it, they make it. Elderly women become models for a day; kids turn into artists for a week. In this art scene, there is no stage to separate the actors from the spectators.

After these local exhibitions, two important things happen: The images are transported to London, New York, Berlin or Amsterdam where new people interpret them in the light of their own personal experience. And ongoing art and craft workshops in the originating community continue the work of celebrating everyone who lives there."

Check out this video from the Inside out Project, get involved!!

TED Prize Winner JR & INSIDE OUT from TED Prize on Vimeo.

Here's a slideshow recently featured in the New York times.

You can see more photos of his graffiti on Flickr.

And J R's site.

Another of my favorite social graffiti artists is Banksy, already very established in the global street art community - who hails from Bristol in England, famous for his fantastical, uncannily-realistic graffiti. Always pushing the envelope. Check out one of my favorites, two policemen kissing), and his famous rat motif.


This week I'm spending heaps of time with my grandparents and trying to enjoy the last of this fall foliage.

Lastly, here's a poem a friend from Chiloé sent me recently by Edmundo Herrera, about Valparaíso.

VALPARAISO NUPCIAL

A Valparaíso, azul manzana de la Vida.

Valparaíso nupcial, rincón de la ternura, recodo
del crepúsculo, cofradía de constelaciones; anillo de agua

ofreces al viajero, luz y sombra de la vida, panal
y Rosa de los Vientos, magnético y sonámbulo.

Ebrias callejuelas te cruzan de relámpagos la cintura,
patria de mi abuela, refugio de mi madre, bandera

de mi infancia; Valparaíso civil de madrugada, acorralado
por fraternales cántaros y rojos vinos peligrosos; por ahí

caminan mis hermanos Carlos Hermosilla, Pedro Luna, Ginés
Contreras, Praxíteles Vásquez, Manuel Astica, Cameron, Fuentealba,

mi compadre Polo con naipes y briscas bullangueras;
arriba vive la mamy Luisa, gaviotas errantes, peregrinas

abejas, hembras veloces, cercadas a pique en los acantilados
del humo. Valparaíso: quien dijo que la vida tiene una puerta,

centinela alegórico, Valparaíso, sin vuelta. Por cerro Florida,
Ramaditas, Mariposas, Plaza Echaurren, el Mercado,

subida Condell, Barón, buscamos estaciones donde apagar gargantas.
Valparaíso, tu sol emborracha y te ofrezco mi guitarra

vagabunda, mis pájaros marinos: recojo tu gitana sonrisa,
el Bar Roland a medianoche. Valparaíso de piel dorada

y luminosa, lámpara secreta de cómplices claroscuros,
tu primavera azul persigue mi navío perdido en la niebla.