Street Art in POA

The street art of the city of Porto Alegre is rich and fascinating and all over the place. In fact it seems that the majority of photographs that I take here involve art that I come across while moving around the city. While I can tell basic differences between graffiti, murals, stencils, sticker/posters and tagging, I don't always understand the subtleties, politics or meaning behind what I am seeing. There's so much to learn!

I intern in a region of the city called Partenon, where there is a very active drug trade just a few blocks from the office. As a result, I haven't wandered around too much outside of the main streets on my own. But even within the area that I've seen, there's all sorts of great stuff to appreciate on my way to work:

Recently, I was discussing a potential photo project with a couple social workers at the office. One social worker, L. mentioned that she thought having the kids document the graffiti of their neighborhoods would be a great project. She talked about how graffiti and tagging has been such a problem in the area, that shop owners have taken a different tactic. In an effort to prevent their shops being covered with graffiti, they pay graffiti artists to paint murals on their walls.

I love this response, which creates such a different relationship within the neighborhood. As for the photo project, we decided to present the kids with several different ideas and ask them to choose which one they prefer. In any case, I bet it's going to turn out cool!