Shots with the masters

Italian artist TVBoy, who has gained notoriety for portraits of the Pope and Donald Trump, Messi and Cristiano, and just yesterday an embrace between deadlocked politicians Mariano Rajoy and Carles Puigdemont. My shots are decidedly less contraversial in nature, portraits of modernized masters Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso, reimagined as street artists. I’ve also decided to include two photos of myself with the masters. This dynamic duo (minus me) can be found on the Carrer de Santa Tecla, near Corsega, in Gràcia.

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Manhattan street art tour: NYC trip post 2

Post number two of my NYC trip is dedicated to the street art tour I decided to take on a chilly Saturday morning. The tour was run by an outfit called Free Tours By Foot, and they run tours on all different types of themes in cities all over.

It definitely felt a bit odd, to be walking with a tour group in a city which I had called home for so many years. But considering that my interest in street art didn’t start until well after I had left NYC, it was a really great way see the city for the first time. The tour guide was a great source of information, being an artist himself, and put a lot of time and research to make the tour as educational as possible. I definitely learned a lot, and don’t feel quite so much as a layman as I did before.

The tour took us through SoHo, Little Italy, Chinatown, and scraped the Lower East Side, all areas which were a part of my regular stomping grounds when I lived there, so it was a great experience to see such familiar streets from a different point of view. The tour finishes off on Mulberry street in the slightly tacky heart of Little Italy, so I didn’t linger around for too long. Though I couldn’t resist grabbing a cannoli before moving on.

Needless to say, I definitely recommend this tour next time you’re in NYC. There are also tours of Bushwick, Astoria, and Williamsburg available. Here’s the link.

Paral·lel, celebrity tributes in Raval, and a gritty garden

Today’s shots come from the free walls at Tres Xemeneies, near Avinguda Paral·lel, some random wanderings through the neighbouring Raval, and a new location (at least for me): the Jardins de Walter Benjamin, which are just near the Port, and mark the last frontier before the city gives way to Montjuic Park. As suggested in the title, the “gardens” themselves are nothing to marvel at, but the walls, which separate them from the playground of a local school, are the main attraction.

The Raval was full of tributes to famous faces, among them Debbie Harry, Kafka, Dennis Rodman, the late Prince, Jesus Christ (by artist sm172), and Football Club Barcelona’s favourite tax-dodging wunderkind, Neymar Jr.

As my geo-tagging feature on my camera app has become a bit unpredictable with the latest android update, my locations aren’t quite a precise as before. That said, a good wander round the Raval/Poble Sec area does a body good!

 

Back to the neighbourhood: zombie tourists,paste-ups and killer popsicles

For my second May post (which is actually hitting in June) I’ve decided to return to Gràcia, as I haven’t posted much from the surrounding area lately. Most of these shots come from strolls around the vila over the last three or four weeks. As suggested in the title, one of the more interesting ones is a portrait of tourists as paella-wielding, selfie-sticked zombie hordes who come to invade our quiet little neighbourhood nearly year-round. This sentiment can be seen in occasional graffiti which read “tourists go home”. As a foreigner who first came as a tourist, I’m a bit torn; while I recognize that tourism is vital to our local economy, and that a good majority of tourists are well-behaved and civilized, I also know as a resident what a putada it can be having the area so constantly crowded. On balance, I’m in favour of tourism, but I think that we need to start moving toward a more sustainable model. This is what the current city administration (in theory) is going for–a city planned and built for its residents, but also welcoming for tourists. A difficult happy medium to achieve, but a noble objective, in my humble opinion.

The other shots are rather random and generally political in nature, along with some anthropomorphized popsicles from konair, and some paste ups which have been appearing with increasing frequency.

Hands up, don’t shoot! Gentrification and my first “100” on Instagram

Today’s post features just a single image–well, two views of a single image–which I captured while wandering the streets of Bushwick, which has become one of the hippest neighborhoods in the hippest borough of New York City. Indeed, the streets of 2016 Bushwick were a stark contrast to the Bushwick I first encountered in 1995, when I was offered a small, ground-floor studio apartment. Had you told me then, when I paid for my soda and chips through a plexi-glass partition at the bodega that these same streets would one day be home to gastropub-cinemas and sidewalk cafés offering fair trade lattés and vegan pastries, I would have spit my Mountain Dew all over the potholed street.

Bushwick has also become well-known as a haven for some fantastic street art, which will be featured in a future post.

Today’s image is a pasteup of a young boy with his hands up, and below him the caption “don’t shoot”. It seems to be a reference to the phrase “hands up, don’t shoot”, which has become the mantra of many protests by groups such as  the Black Lives Matter movement. It is perhaps for this reason it quickly became the first photo ever on my Instagram feed to reach 100 likes. I consider this quite a milestone, as I’ve had the Instagram account for around the same amount of time as I’ve been keeping this blog, for just over 4 years.

Speaking of my instagram account, it’s a great place to check out some of the street shots that didn’t make it on to the blog, along with other non-street art related images I find along the way. My instagram name is @tbri001. Be sure to check it out!

Star sightings and political passions: NYC trip, post 1

As a teacher here in Barcelona, I generally get holidays around the same time as schools and universities. One of the more important ones is the Holy Week break, which is basically spring break, culminating in Easter. This year I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and book a short trip to my old stomping ground, New York City. I had a few bureaucratic issues to take care of, but I was also quite interested in rediscovering and reconnecting with the place I had called home for so long. My departure from NYC predates my interest in street art, so exploring the streets of Gotham became one of my main objectives. I was able to snap nearly 800 shots, way too much to put into a single post.

Instead, I’ll be spreading it out over a series of posts.

This first one will be rather small, and just a small teaser.

These first shots of the late Amy Winehouse and the great Jerry Seinfeld were both found on the same East Village alleyway, while the larger than life mural in memory of David Bowie was found on Kenmare Street, on the Lower East Side.These photos are quite special to me as they highlight one of the peculiarities of living in New York: the possibility of seeing some of the most famous faces in the world going about their daily business. Any true New Yorker, outwardly, wouldn’t bat an eye at sharing an aisle at Whole Foods with Madonna, but of course we all notice, and tell our friends about it later. I suspect with the advent of mobile technology some will even dare a discreet photo.

The other three photos are also quite significant as they are two political figures which have managed to inspire more passion and engaged more people politically than I can remember. The figures are Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Both very different ideologically, but equally passion-inspiring to their followers (and detractors). Which one do I prefer? Shouldn’t be too difficult to guess…

PS: check the captions for locations

Artist credits:

Amy Winehouse and Jerry Seinfeld by SacSix

Trump the turd by hansky

David Bowie the graffiti room

Near Suffok and Rivington

Kenmare and Mott Sts

Freeman Alley, off Rivington

Freeman Alley off Rivington

Orchard off Canal

 

A surprise behind the Basilica: a gallery of doorway art

As cathedrals go in Barcelona, the undisputed champion would be, of course, the Sagrada Familia. You won’t find any pictures of it here, not because I don’t love it, but because a google search will yield hundreds of thousands of photos that would be much better taken than anything I could manage with my modest mobile photography skills. But I digress…

There are a number of other cathedrals worth checking out, most notably the Cathedral of Barcelona and the bustling plaza which surrounds it. My favourite, however, is in the Born neighbourhood, and a bit closer to the sea, hence the name: Santa Maria del Mar. I won’t post any pictures either, as I would hardly do it justice–but I definitely recommend it.

While you’re there, after you’ve marveled at majestic Basilica, take a turn onto a small side street called Mirallers, marked on the map here, and start walking along this street till the end. You should also be careful not to miss the surrounding streets, especially carrer d’en Rosic and carrer de Grunyí. Be on the lookout for some of the huge, old doors that have been covered in stickers, pasteups and all different sorts of images. With all signs pointing to the disappearance of the Galeria Magdalena to make room for a new construction project, this may be one of the only outdoor galleries we have left, aside from the free walls.

 

Street sign sticker bombing

While I’m not sure how long it’s been going on, there has been a bombing campaign of these simple black stick figures popping up on street signs all over the city. A bit of internet research seems to point to a French-born artist who started his project in Italy and has been slowly spreading it around Europe. You can check out an interview with him here. As they are very high, and I operate with a smartphone camera, I’ve only been able to snap up a few good images. The angle always seems to distort the image. But here’s one I managed to capture on a corner here in Gràcia. One advantage of being so high up is that while they are less photograph-able, they will certainly last a bit longer. And it’s a perfect excuse to get out and go on a street art safari.

Frog brain

I’ve been sitting on this image since the early summer, when I first started taking these pictures, and it remains one of the most popular on my instagram feed. In reality, it’s quite small, a sticker probably about the size of my palm slapped on some overscrawled surface in the Gothic quarter. I’ve since seen a few duplicates, but I think whoever produced it only made a small batch. I’d be interested to see some other organ-animal fusions in the future.

Luck runs away

This pair of images (not counting those horrible locksmith stickers that pollute the urban landscape) is so small as to be nearly invisible. A wide metal door just off the always lively Plaça del Sol in Gràcia. I immediately thought of the old superstition that states that if the cat is walking away from you it is taking your good fortune along with it. The woman doesn’t seem too bothered by this possibility, however.