Street Art = Street Photography

We spend Christmas in Texas this year and I was looking for some photographic excitement to get a break from too much family gathering. Reacting on a tip by my son, I got into the car and drove to an area of vacant, dilapidated buildings with lots of Street Art. The large area, vacated by a big Texas company, was all fenced in with signs about what was going to happen to me if I entered the secret grounds. Well, my age gives me problems while scaling 8ft fences but a big gate, wide open, was just too much to resist especially since I could see some Street Art in the distance.

I am not for vandalism at all, especially with paint spray cans, because it is ugly and causes building owners lots of grief. However, I realize that every artistic person needs training and those old buildings were ideal for “Street Art” training. While I was only in 2 of the many buildings, I really got impressed by the efforts of the younger folks that practice their art without any acknowledgement or praise by the general public or even their closest families. I met some of them in the 2nd building when they prepared a wall for the next masterpiece.

Those Street Art artists give photographers like me lots of subjects to photograph and I really don’t mind photographing someone else’s art even if our judges frown on such a practice. 

At the last judging the judge gave an “out” to an image of a statue of 2 boys while giving a 3rd place to 2 stone birds. Go figure.

I prepared a 10 image slide show above for you to follow me on my photographic field trip onto forbidden grounds.

BG