some categories

This is a tag that was painted on my fence in Oregon Hill about a year ago. I have always been interested in graffiti, but this interest was increased when I noticed the power of graffiti to motivate the City of Richmond to uncharacteristic swift action.
Though the City is often slow, if not unresponsive to citizen complaints or requests for services, this tag was immediately removed the day after I posted my request/complaint on the City website.

This rapid response got me to thinking about graffiti in terms of a dialog of power, or with power that is so intense or important or threatening that it motivates significant action and expenditure in the authorities - an action and expense that seems disproportionate somehow. Excessive response to a threat often enhances the power of that threat. Maybe William S. Burroughs was right when he told us that "control is controlled by the need to control."

I find myself loosely categorizing types of graffiti ranging from bathroom-stall sex-oriented graffiti and basic territorial tags to handwritten poetry and complex murals as well as many other forms. Graffiti also range in terms of their intelligence, or the level of literacy they express. Though I never got a picture of it, one of the most brilliant graffiti texts I have read was the question casually spray-painted on to the footbridge going to Belle Isle:
"Why don't we say 'just adulting'?"

Here are a few different samples from Richmond:


near south side of Lee Bridge - at first this appeared to be a mural on an abandoned building, a closer look revealed a signature and date, making me wonder if it was commissioned by the business that used to inhabit the building - but I don't know for sure.
Details of this one will be featured in later posts.





I love to find graffiti that is reflective, philosophical, enigmatic...things that make me think like this one written on the city-painted wall with a Sharpie inside the abandoned Vepco plant Belle Isle....I know what a Kraken is, but, WTF?