New on the web - Russian stencil art community @ LiveJournal

I've mentioned on my other blog the degree to which the Russian-language blogosphere is dominated by LiveJournal sites. LiveJournal allows the creation of "communities" where people who share interests can congregate virtually. As of June 1, 2005, there's a community dedicated to Russian stencil art, with a lot of photos added already by aficionados and practitioners of this art form.

My favorite so far (originally posted here) is this one:



The combination of a dig at the Russian President and a reference to a Bob Marley song is pretty outstanding.

Someone in the community located a recent post of mine (on a series of stencils) and posted the photos here. As I keep saying, I have lots more photos of stencils from Moscow and St. Petersburg, and I'll be posting them later on in the summer when I should have a bit more free time.

Political graffiti

All of these photos are from the alleyway leading to Tochka at Leninsky Prospekt 6 and were taken on the afternoon of June 4:


The message on the left, transliterated, reads "FSB FAK OF," but in English that would look like "FSB F**k off."


The message in red reads, "No to Uncle Pootie!" I doubt the writer knows that "Pootie-poot" was written about as being one of George W. Bush's nicknames for the Russian president.


Self-explanatory.

PS I am posting this from the Shanghai Library. We're spending a week in Shanghai to attend the wedding of an old friend of mine. For a city of well over 10 million, there is surprisingly little graffiti here, although I've found a few bits that I'll post later on.

Lies!

Is it really possible that I haven't posted anything for a month? Please see my excuses for this sad fact here.

This is a worthy return to active photoblogging, though - an awesome set of stencils that I saw yesterday in the alleyway leading to the Tochka club (where a lot of alternative and other music acts perform) at Leninsky Prospekt 6:



These are TV sets, if you can't tell, and the Russian word on the screen is, "Lies!"