Graffiti Tags

What makes your photo so extraordinary is that you’ve managed to find a single tag on an empty white wall. The juxtaposition of the grey zigzag stairs perfectly offsets the coloured curves of the simply naive tag. The half visible men give a sense of scale to your timely street shot. I guess that it won’t be too long before the KLS Crew are joined by other taggers from the Lisbon ‘hood and the white wall becomes a mishmash of abstract tags. It would be interesting to return one day and photograph a comparison diptych photo.

Graffiti taggers often choose their nom de plumes by misspelling actual words as in this case. I presume ‘Khatce’ is a deviant spelling of ‘Catch’. Whatever the reason for the misspelling you have perfectly offset the tag with the inclusion of the broken windows in the top half of your composition. You don’t give a location for your photo but I can tell that the graffiti is painted on an abandoned building exactly like the ones taggers are drawn to all over the world. You did very well to find the location and to khatce a very good sense-of-place.

This photograph perpetuates the causality dilemma of which came first - the chicken or the egg? Was the graffiti tag there when the couch was sat alongside it or was the dumped couch already there when the artist sprayed the tag with the same colour palette? Whichever it was you did well to spot the potential of your intriguing dual comparison photo. Someone, maybe even you, had the presence of mind to bring the couch to add an extra dimension to the graffiti artist’s work.

I’ve often spoken to taggers as they stand back to contemplate where to aim their next wisp of canned spray. Sometimes it can take them ages and you’ve brilliantly caught one street artist in just such a moment. I particularly like that the tail end of one of the tag arrows is pointing towards the artist and the other arrow is pointing directly at his spray can. Happy accident or intentionally planned, it’s the visual touch that connects the artist to his art and you to the artist with your cleverly conceived composition.

These amateur looking tags spray-painted over layers of other amateur looking tags have been rendered into a piece of fine art simply by the use of your fisheye lens. You have managed to capture the tag-covered ceiling of the South Bank skate park whilst hinting at further graffiti tags on the walls and columns below. I have photographed there many times so admire how original your take is especially if you were hustled by yoofs-with-attitude who often frequent there. To my mind the grey brutalist architecture has always needed brightening up so its a delight to see your colourfully scrunched composition of the area.

Most graffiti artist when they find a site for their art will prep the wall by blackening or, as in this case, whitewashing it beforehand. You’ve wisely taken a step back to include the surrounding brickwork of the tagged area together with the landscape backdrop. But the most inspired detail within your photo is that you clicked to include a figure dressed in the same colour as the tag. The result is that the tiny speck of pink looks like an errant piece of colour splashed outside the boundary of the brick built canvas.

This is a colourless, almost insignificant piece of tagged graffiti on a disused cinema wall most wouldn’t have noticed let alone stopped to photograph. The tag artist had visions of grandeur wanting to see his work framed as if it was displayed inside an art gallery. I’m glad you left the marble surrounding the old movie poster frame because without seeing it in situ the copper signature would have been completely meaningless. So well done to the Prima Donna for framing their autograph and well done to you for giving the graffiti tagger artistic credibility.

At first glance there is nothing outstanding about these mono tags especially as they’re outshone by all the multicoloured entries to this challenge. But it is precisely the lack of colour that makes your shot stand out. By shooting in black and white you’ve cleverly captured the graffiti artist’s visual concept. Your monochrome interpretation looks like a tagger’s preliminary sketch of how their graffiti might look in situ. A good thing too because this religious tagger should have noticed that instead of ‘God is Love’ - the emphasis on the google eyes makes the unintended message read ‘Goo is Love’.

These tattoo studio shutter tags were probably commissioned by like-minded tattoo artists working in the shop but It wouldn’t be a surprise if the tattooists themselves had painted their own shutters. Either way you did well to capture the whole shopfront to place the tag lettering in context. I immediately recognised the Pain Divine Studio (although I’ve never seen the shutters down) because it’s in my own photo stomping ground of Croydon. I’ve even photographed Vaz, the studio owner, after I’d accidentally bumped into him outside his premises. Despite that coincidence your entry is commended purely on its photographic merits being an example of how far tagging has come to being seen as a legitimate art form - accepted enough to even be used as a company logo.

This challenge attracted some beautiful graffiti photos which had nothing to do with tags and some beautiful tag photos which added nothing new to the artist’s work.

You, on the other hand, took time and trouble to plan and take your, out-of-this-world, graffiti tag photo. You used various apps to find the most interesting place to shoot the Milky Way and in the process found the colourfully tagged building. Your settings were exactly right to take a single sharp shot without relying on post-processed composites.. I imagine you used partial flash or torchlight during your exposure to bring out the foreground details in your star-studded entry. Not many people would have had your creative vision, let alone the taggers whose work you’ve helped rocket into the stratosphere.

The supporting walls of bridges are a magnet for graffiti artists because they can go about their work unseen and undisturbed. The Grand Union Canal gives them many such opportunities stretching all the way from London to Birmingham. You chose well to photograph the tags from the opposite canal bank doubling their impact by their reflection in the water. Juxtaposing the colourful freehand artworks with the grey austerity of the overhead steel joists was a good comparison choice. You’ve certainly enhanced the graffiti tags with your mirrored landscape photograph.

There were many entries including graffiti taggers in the photos but to catch two at work at the same time was a real stroke of luck. Looking like artist’s in competition with each other gives your composition a double dimension. Your photo shows how tag artist’s work on their specially prepared black canvases by first outlining their tags before colouring them in with pre-selected spray paints. I’m glad you tagged along behind them to give you the opportunity to record their artistic progress.