Graffiti

Yesterday, I had to present a photo essay for photojournalism. We got to choose our own topics of what we wanted to photograph, and we only had to have around 20-25 photos that told a story.
Originally, I was going to go different tattoo parlors and photograph their studios, artwork, equipment and maybe even a few people getting tattoos/piercings. I visited a few places in Burlington, but each shop was slightly sketchy about letting me photograph their equipment and their clients. It was hard to get good shots, so I switched my idea. I decided to photograph graffiti art instead. A few weeks ago, I had been to Toronto and took some shots of all the cool art murals and graffiti around Queen Street and in Kensington Market. Since I already had these shots done, all I had to do was travel around my town, Waterdown, in search of some teenage graffiti. I found that all the graffiti in Waterdown had many drug references, curse words and were just a jumble of words. It wasn’t appealing to look at, and was more an act of vandalism than an expression of art like it was in Toronto. In Toronto, graffiti artists took the time to add to the scenery of the city, and used huge wall space to display their designs and pictures. One restaurant was even covered in graffiti from top to bottom, which suggested that they asked, or even hired, a graffiti artist to do work on their building.
It’s interesting how different graffiti can be. In most suburban areas, it is vandalism and really has no purpose. However, in cities like Toronto, and New York City, the graffiti is an artistic expression and something enjoyable to look at.

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