On and Off the Wall

Street Art | Graffiti, Murals, Posters, and Signs

 Inside a bell at a pilgrimage site, Mingun, Myanmar/Burma

Graffiti has existed since ancient Greece and Rome.  It expresses political and cultural views, and many consider it an art form.

Myanmar/Burma

 Havana, Cuba

When there are cultural and political shifts, it is sometimes possible to see the earliest indications  by literally looking at the “writing on the wall.”

 Havana, Cuba

Berlin, Germany

 

 Posters are found in public places all over the world. They are  designed to attract the attention of passers-by and entice them to purchase a particular product or service, make them aware of a political viewpoint, or attend a specific event. If suddenly it were decreed that they all must disappear, it would seem that all color had disappeared from the urban landscape, and the cities would appear a mournful gray.
- Max Gallo

 Poster Studio, Mumbai/Bombay, India

Venice, Italy 

Anand, Gujarat, India

 Dentist’s Clinic, Ujjain, India 

 New York, NY

 Throughout the world there have been murals on walls as long as there have been people to scratch them, paint them, etch them, carve them and make them.

New York, NY 

Street art on the pavement at Seventh Avenue & Bleecker Street, New York

From the prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux, France, to the ceremonial and celebratory murals of ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome,
India, and Mesopotamia, the history of murals is long,  rich and varied.
 

Los Angeles, California

  Ancient murals often depicted activities in which the people of the time engaged, from religious ceremonies to
scenes of hunting and gathering for sustenance.
- Kaizaad Kotwal

 Mujahid, Kabul, Afghanistan

 Kunduz, Afghanistan

 Young men admiring Movie Poster, Pul-i-Khumri, Afghanistan 

 Poster Vendor, Kabul, Afghanistan 

 Posters are mirrors because they reflect and sometimes distort the culture and the customs of the time.
- Max Gallo

Metro Station, Paris, France

Nice piece in PhotoShelter blog:
http://blog.photoshelter.com/2011/07/steve-mccurry-the-iconic-photographs-unboxing.html

Language of Looking

Please scroll to the bottom for the unseen portrait of the week. 

 There are many ways to describe the ways that people look at each other and the world.  We peek, stare, glance, gaze, gape, glare, and peer.  We also examine, contemplate, squint, and observe.

 

 Jodhpur, India

Yangon, Myanmar/Burma

 Berlin, Germany

The question is not what you look at, but what you see. 
 - Henry David Thoreau 

Croatia

Kabul, Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Kabul, Afghanistan

Thirumullaivayil, India

One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye; it transcends speech; it is the bodily
symbol of identity. 
- Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Train to Peshawar, Pakistan

Myanmar/Burma

Paraguay

Barkhor Quarter, Lhasa, Tibet

It’s the way to educate your eyes.  Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop.  Die knowing something.  You are not here long.
- Walker Evans  

Reina Sofia, National Museum of Art, Madrid, Spain

If you look at a thing 999 times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it for the 1000th time,
you are in danger of seeing it for the first time.
-  G. K. Chesterton 

Jaipur, India

I used to try to figure out precisely what I was seeing all the time, until I discovered I didn’t need to.
If the thing is there, why, there it is.
- Walker Evans

A man examines photographs of victims of the Khmer Rouge’s S-21 prison camp, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

 Unseen Portrait of the WeekBaluchistan, Pakistan

The Eye of the Beholder

 

 The Taj Mahal in Agra, India, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, are two of the world’s most iconic buildings.   They both evoke passionate emotions, even love, despite being  on opposite ends of the historical and architectural spectrum. 

 

 

Taj Mahal, Agra, India
Built with translucent white marble and inlaid with gems from China, Tibet, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and the Arabian peninsula

 

 In both buildings shape, size, scale, proportion, texture, color, and light  work together to spectacular effect, but very simple structures can also be designed to bring aesthetic pleasure.

 

 

Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain
Constructed with a steel frame covered with titanium sheathing

 

What makes things pleasing to our eyes, and how can the design of everything from majestic buildings to simple utilitarian structures bring delight?

 

 

Kyoto, Japan

 

For centuries, there has been documented evidence that people have preferences for structures in the built environment and in the natural environment that have certain geometric  proportions known as the golden ratio or golden proportion. 

 

 

Red Fort, New Delhi, India

  

  The ratio of length to width of approximately 1.618  appears not only in art and architecture, but also in natural structures.

 

 

Potala Palace, Lhasa, Tibet

 

 

 

 

Junagarh Fort, Bikaner, Rajasthan, India

 

 

 

Step Well, India

 

 

Kimberly Elam’s book,  Geometry of Design: Studies in Proportion and Composition, points out that things in nature as different as
the human body, the pine cone, and the trout all share natural proportioning systems that provide the foundation for all art, architecture, and design.

 

 

Summer Palace, Beijing, China

 

 

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is

recognition of the pattern. 
 - Alfred North Whitehead, Mathemetician

 

 

Jodhpur, India

 

  

Gujarat, India

 

 

 Jaipur, India, 2008

 

 

 On photography and geometry:

“For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to “give a meaning” to the world, one has to feel involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry.” 
- Henri Cartier-Bresson

 

 

“Let no one destitute of geometry enter my doors.”  -  Plato 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unpublished, Unseen 4

Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2011

 

Over the past thirty years, I have taken nearly a million pictures.   Many of them have been published in my books, in magazines, and seen in my exhibitions, but a majority have never been seen.  Here are a few of those unseen pictures.

 

Myanmar/Burma, 2011

 

 Burma, 2011

 

 

Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2011

 

  

Tokyo, Japan, 2008

 

 

Day of Ashura, Afghanistan

 

 

France, 1989

 

Madrid, 1995

 

 

Rajasthan, India, 2010

 

 

Myanmar/Burma, 2011

 

 

Myanmar/Burma

 

 

Mumbai/Bombay, 2011

 

 

India

 

 

Chiang Mai, Thailand

 

 

Myanmar/Burma

 

 

India

 

Over the years I’ve come to see  that all of us are basically the same.  There are many more similarities that bind us than differences that separate us.

 

 

Yangon, Myanmar/Burma