Went out a few nights ago with a few pretty well known urban artists from around LA. We left at 2 A.M. and when we were finally heading home, the early morning commuters were already on the streets drinking their coffee. We hit up Melrose Ave in Hollywood, one of the streets known for it's urban art, especially with Obey. I photographed them wheat pasting and tagging certain signs and buildings...I even climbed to the top of a building to get one of these shots...one of my cameras took a pretty nasty fall off of a railing while climbing but luckily it survived. It's amazing how much etiquette goes in to illegal art. As far as the photography only two rules I must follow: No complete faces, no identity
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8 And the Artists
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Thanks for looking, stay tuned for a full project on illegal art!
How great an experience for you, I would love to be able to do that, I love graffiti and street art, would love to photograph the in action part, I live near LA guess I should go up sometime really late and try to catch some at it.
Love the shot with the cop car in bg and will watching for more on your work with this.
I recently moved back to LA and live right near there. I was bummed to leave behind photographing backcountry of central Oregon but I have been falling in love with the streets of LA at night. The emptiness coupled with the street art is beautiful. It makes roaming the streets at night with the dog and the camera worthwhile.
The wheat pastings are awesome and these guys add a lot of character to a city that really seems to be famous for mostly the wrong things.
Are you posting the full project here? Thanks for sharing this-
Visually most of the LA graffiti is just garbage, usually gang related tagging. OTOH there are some true artists who are doing their work sometime with owners permission / blessing but mostly illegally. Sometimes it's more interesting to look at than a wall of 200 posters for "Knight and Day"...
Every once in a while the high brow galleries rediscover urban street art and promote it, show it, sell it and praise the "wonderful expression of angst" or whatever. So it goes both ways, "one man's vandal is another man's artist"
love this set, for all you haters jump off your high horse for a moment an see this objectively: great subject matter whether you think it is morally right or wrong, a story has been told in this set with a high degree of technical difficulty (lowest of light) - let alone thinking about what it takes to gain the graffiti artists trust and respect in the first place.
reminds me of war photojournalism. Great work Jimmy - most interesting "people" post I have seen here yet.
Love the set. Really brilliant work. IMO you've portrayed them well as artists, not vandals.
My only comment would be that in image 8 it doesn't seem to quite fit the set, maybe because it's inside but sort of doesn't fit in as well with the style. Still like it though, good setting for the shot so can't really complain!
I like 3, although it would be more visually interesting ( to me) if you cropped starting from the left of the artist. I think it would be more powerful due to the simplicity of the photo.
Thanks for the comments everyone, this was an incredibly difficult thing to shoot considering the limitations and obstacles...like climbing a 3 story building and hiding from the cops...not to mention the safety or the legal trouble I could have got in for accompanying them. Even though its legal to photograph an illegal activity, I've heard some pretty bad things happen to photographers following urban artists around. But in my opinion it was all worth the risk, I got some photos that in my opinion capture the feel of what its like out there and show the world whats going on during the streets from 2-6 A.M.
Jeremy these were shot on a 1d Iv with the 24L, all @ ISO 12800. The low IQ if anything de-glamorizes what they are doing and captures the gritty, dark and grungy feel that surrounds them at night. I could have made these images pop and have a real commercial feel to them, creating "desirable" image quality. But that wouldn't capture reality.
