Moscow Graffiti

Amazing

2008-06-03T19:42:00.000-07:00

This video is incredible:

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

St. Petersburg Graffiti

2008-05-13T19:22:00.001-07:00

No G-8!
Originally uploaded by lyndonk2

I've uploaded a bunch of photos of St. Petersburg street art from a couple of years ago. Enjoy!

Zachem - again and again

2007-08-25T13:44:00.000-07:00

I've posted a lot of photos of the work (in various media) of the Zachem (or 3A4eM, or Зачем) crew - and found their website for the first time today (the caption on the front page says "consume work die") - here are a couple more such pics:

3x Zachem stencil on Petrovka, 6:08pm, March 26, 2005.

Large Zachem stencil on Varsonof'evsky Pereulok, 5:57pm, March 26, 2005.

Mops and a bucket

2007-08-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

"Vedro" means "bucket" in Russian - mops included!
Behind 13 Staropimenovsky Pereulok, April 21, 2005, just after 7pm.

Sovok

2007-08-18T10:23:00.000-07:00

In honor of "sovok" being defined more or less correctly on urbandictionary.com (not news, but news to me - but a full definition should include the word's "straight" meaning - dustpan):

Behind 13 Staropimenovsky Pereulok, April 21, 2005, just after 7pm.

Stencils on and near Bol. Bronnaya

2007-08-17T21:13:00.000-07:00

All of these photos are from April 16, 2005, at around 4:20pm.

Cowboy with firecrackers, gas mask (partially covered), pipe-smoking Indian.

trafAReT / Go! Go! (note that "trafaret" means "stencil" in Russian and that the letters spelling ART are capitalized) .

Basketball net - this was in the same doorway as the "trafAReT" stencil.

Diver holding a big fish.

"Filling the world with color"

2007-08-15T13:11:00.000-07:00

Graffiti artists from all over the world have spray-painted the Queens
building named 5 Pointz. (By Frank Franklin -- Associated Press)

An Answer to Its Sprayers: New York's Graffiti Haven

By Sonia Moghe
Associated Press
Washington Post, Tuesday, August 14, 2007; page C03

NEW YORK -- Cave Tirado shakes a can of orange spray paint and begins to emblazon his name on his first American wall. He is not looking over his shoulder or worried that the police might catch him.

Tirado, 19, traveled to New York from Spain, partly to see the city, but mostly to leave his mark on the walls of an old Queens warehouse where graffiti is legal.

"I always write my name," he said in Spanish, while wearing a graffiti-style shirt that also bears his name. "To represent your name -- that's what graffiti is to me."

The warehouse, called 5 Pointz, has become a haven for artists in a city where graffiti has flourished for decades and where officials have waged a seemingly endless battle to keep it out.

The idea behind 5 Pointz was to give people a legal outlet to spray-paint as much graffiti as they like on the five-story building -- without ever having to worry about getting busted.

"The purpose of this building isn't to eliminate graffiti and to be a cure for the graffiti problem," says Jonathan Cohen, 34, who runs 5 Pointz. "It's a place where you can take what you do and push the boundaries to a point where you're doing something that there's no way you can do illegally because you have plenty of time."

Otto Munoz has made graffiti illegally, but he now comes to 5 Pointz to practice drawing and to soak in other styles of graffiti that have made their way here from around the world.

"It's not worth the risk to go out and get two throw-ups [pieces] and get arrested for five years, and that's five years you can't be painting," Munoz says.

There are different types of graffiti: "Bombers" quickly paint simple, two-toned messages, generally their names, onto walls; "writers" make more elaborate artwork.

The writers convene on most weekends at 5 Pointz and paint pieces with bright colors and sharp or curvy shapes on the walls. But as Cohen notes, the walls change every week.

The best view of 5 Pointz is from the subway, where the entire edifice emerges as a patchwork quilt of spray paint.

New York City law prohibits people between the ages of 18 and 21 from possessing "graffiti instruments" unless they are in locked containers. The law also made it mandatory for certain property owners to report graffiti postings on their properties to the city so that they can be cleaned up. Artists have taken the city to court over the law.

But, as Cohen notes, time spent at 5 Pointz is time spent off the street.

"The time that someone spends here . . . working on the building, painting on the building -- they aren't going out and destroying the city, which is a benefit toward the city," Cohen says. "But . . . if someone wants to do something illegally, they're going to do it illegally whether or not this place is here."

Tirado has done graffiti both legally and illegally in Spain, France and now the United States, and says he frequently runs from police.

"We're not killing anyone, nor are we robbing. We're not doing anything," he says. "We're just filing the world with color."

Chisinau - Telecentru underpass

2007-05-30T15:54:00.001-07:00

CIMG9609
Originally uploaded by lyndonk2

Dissenters' sticker

2007-04-18T15:44:00.000-07:00

Image: LJ user drugoi

The sticker says:

THEY ARE GROWING FAT ["During the time of Putin's rule, the army of bureaucrats has grown by 4,000,000 people"]
WE ARE DYING OFF ["And the population of Russia has declined by 7,000,000 as a result of poverty and insufficient availability of medicines"]

DISSENTERS' MARCH - 14 April starting at 12.00 on Pushkin Square

At least I'm pretty sure that's what it says, but as you can see some of the words are blurry. I'm not sure if the first claim is correct, and the second one is obviously an exaggeration - Russians are dying off for lots of reasons - but it seems like an effective bit of marketing for the event.

SPB stenciller gerdaa...

2007-04-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

...has a photopage with a few of her works. On it, she describes her location as "Saint-Putinberg, Russian Federation." I have photos of some of her stencils somewhere - very creative work (and yes, I know it's half-assed to just say I have them and not post them - maybe later). You can read more about her at her LJ.

Education is what remains...

2007-04-15T23:48:00.000-07:00

Photo taken April 1, 2006.
The stencil says:

"Education is what
remains after one
has forgotten
everything he
learned in school"

-some dumbass
named Albert
Einstein

My favorite part of this photo is that the high school in the background is the very same one I graduated from almost 13 years ago (that bit is the rather unattractive newer wing, the older portion of the building is a classic red-brick schoolhouse with a white clocktower). The stencil appears to be a paraphrase of a genuine Einstein quote, though it may be apocryphal. "Forwarded around the internet" does not always = correct, and I can't find it on Bartleby.

Hometown flavor

2007-04-07T23:17:00.000-07:00

View of the Potomac River and Key Bridge (looking from Washington, DC, across the river to Virginia) from an old bridge piling, Oct. 15, 2006.

Dissident street art, Russia, circa 2005

2007-04-03T22:22:00.000-07:00

[Source unknown, file dated June 13, 2005]
This one is self-explanatory, unless you are a poor soul who has never heard of Bob Marley.

St. Petersburg, Dec. 25, 2005.

This one takes the Russian word for victory (победа) and crosses out the first two letters to arrive at "беда," which means "misfortune" or "disaster." The sticker is promoting an opposition website, Diktatu.net (cleverly making use of the .net domain name to say no to dictatorship).

Graf and bums

2007-04-01T21:54:00.000-07:00

Sadly, this is not an April Fool's Day joke.

Moscow, Russia, April 29th, 2005

Paris, France, Aug. 17, 2006.

Budapest street artist

2007-03-01T12:28:00.000-08:00

A gallery of interesting work is available here.

Graf post

2007-02-23T11:55:00.000-08:00

Interesting pics at English Russia. Thanks, MK.

Old Moscow graf, including Visual Artifacts promo

2007-02-15T20:30:00.000-08:00

Photos taken in Moscow, July 2, 2005

Kiosk near Metro Aeroport with a sign indicating
it's closed. Note the little stencil guy.

Entrance to the underpass under Leningradka by Aeroport
metro. The little stencil is advertising the Visual Artifacts
project, which I've been meaning to post about for a long
time. It's a compilation of street art organized by Moscow
artists Bigud' and Ches, among others.

SPB Stencils

2006-04-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

"Trish" and St. Encil," from last summer in the Northern Capital.

Plagiarism

2006-04-15T12:26:00.000-07:00

From a graffiti feature in a free newspaper published in Moscow called "Aktsiia" - they don't seem to be online, so I decided to bring some of their photos to a wider audience. Just to be clear, these are not my pictures. These are from last summer. Click to expand.

More on Mambo / Bow

2006-04-15T12:18:00.000-07:00

I'm finally posting some draft posts that have been languishing in Blogger for nearly a year. This one was originally intended as a follow-up to my initial post on Mambo. I'm sure this graf is all dated by now, and probably some of it has been painted over...

All of these photos are from 2005.

Mambo, betw Spiridonovka St. and Granatny Pereulok, 7:17pm, Apr 12

Mambo tag off B. Kozikhinsky Pereulok (?), 7:43pm, Apr 12

Mambo in courtyard just off of garden ring, 6:08pm Apr 13

"Mambo by entrance to in courtyard off Kamergersky Pereulok, shortly after 7pm, April 17

Mambo in courtyard of Kamergersky Pereulok, 7:15pm, April 17

Elsewhere in the world... http://www.duncancumming.co.uk/photos.cfm?photo=2585

"Dead" graffiti

2006-04-15T12:14:00.000-07:00

These were all painted over (or, "abated," I guess, in industry jargon) when I went back to photograph them again a month or two later. Hence the title of the post. All photos from 2005.

Graf in courtyard behind B. Patriarshy Pereulok, April 9

Graf in courtyard behind B. Patriarshy Pereulok, April 9

Graf in courtyard behind B. Patriarshy Pereulok, April 9

In courtyard behind B. Patriarshy Pereulok, April 9

Tashkent Graffiti

2006-04-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

Some relatively unimpressive graf from Tashkent, photographed during the week of July 20-27 of last year. The first inscription is promoting an Uzbek hip-hop site with some better examples of the local graffiti.

Just the Facts

2005-12-30T10:40:00.000-08:00

Facts gets up on a bin holding, according to the sign, an "Emergency reserve of anti-ice materials." In the background is the imposing Ministry of Foreign Affairs building.

Assorted Moscow tags

2005-12-29T20:10:00.000-08:00

These are some photos from last summer - hardly the best of the bunch, but they're the ones I happen to have already uploaded and saved as a draft post, which is important when you're working with a 30kbps dial-up connection. I'm just trying to shake the dust of a 3-month hiatus off of this blog.

Doors of the Aeroport metro station. The tag seems to be "SME," but I doubt the writer had in mind the standard meaning of that abbreviation - "small and medium enterprise."

Bigud' on a vent. The word is the singular form, which doesn't exist in the dictionary, of "bigudi," which is how you say "hair curlers" in Russian, although of course I have no idea whether that has anything to do with the tag's intended meaning, if any.

FET on an ad placed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs advising citizens to "Inform [the authorities] about suspicious people before you see them on the news" and providing telephone numbers to enable people to do this. On the Boulevard Ring, near Nikitskie Vorota.

Taxman

2005-12-29T19:32:00.000-08:00

This is the entrance to the tax inspectorate on Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, photographed on December 23. A witty writer has inscribed the words "We spend your money" below the organization's dignified plaque. In Russian, the word for "to spend" - tratit' - can also mean "to waste."

Of course, the implicit accusation is not true, strictly speaking; the tax inspectors only collect the public's money, and they don't spend very much of it at all. But, as with most bumper-sticker-type slogans - or allegations in black PR campaigns - this one doesn't have to be true for it to be effective.

The sign on the trash can says, "Citizens for a clean city."

Haters

2005-09-30T10:33:00.000-07:00

It's always good to remember that there are some people out there who don't think street art is such a great thing. Via the Russian Stencil Art Community on LiveJournal.

More unlicensed Disney

2005-09-29T22:09:00.000-07:00

This little gem of a sticker was spotted in the area of Tverskaya St. on the evening of May 28 of this year. The word on the right is "EARS." Funny, right?

DC dreamers

2005-09-07T23:02:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of stencil-based messages on utility boxes in Washington, DC - both of them have such nice, dreamy messages that I had to share them. I promise more photos of graf from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other cities outside of Russia in the coming weeks (months?), but I just haven't had enough time to devote to this project recently.

"Dream more, work less" - note the little heart off to the left of the
message - photographed today around 7pm at 15th and W Streets, NW.

"Grow," photographed on September 6 around 5pm, at 42nd and Albemarle
Streets, NW - right near the building where we've just purchased an apartment.
This is the same utility box featured in one of the first posts on this blog (scroll
to the bottom of that post for the relevant photo).

More Moscow Stickers

2005-08-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

At the intersection of Nikitskaya Ulitsa and the Boulevard Ring. The lower sign
has a sticker from "Liberte," author of many stencils with the same legend around
town, a "Zachem" sticker, and an intriguing elephant silhouette.

This is an enlargement of the sticker which is barely visible in the above photo at top left.
It reads:

There are many pretenders
ZACHEM
Moscow
Unusual stars
Forget everything
you were taught
and learn
to dream.

Amen to that.

Both of these photos were taken on June 27, 2005, at 8:32pm.

Moscow Stickers

2005-08-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

These two stickers were on the Coke fridge which belongs to one of the kiosks
near the McDonald's on Pushkin Square. Photos taken on June 26, 2005, at 4:22pm.
Incidentally, the website indicated on the first sticker (myownazz.ru) is not
accessible for some reason. The second sticker is cooler anyway.

The many uses of graffiti...

2005-08-09T19:55:00.000-07:00

There are plenty of political stickers and graffiti around in Moscow and in some of the other cities where I've photographed, and this Washington Post article raises the possibility that such things are not always grass-roots phenomena.

Before the War, CIA Reportedly Trained a Team of Iraqis to Aid U.S.
By Dana Priest and Josh White, August 3, 2005; Page A12

Before the war in Iraq began, the CIA recruited and trained an Iraqi paramilitary group, code-named the Scorpions, to foment rebellion, conduct sabotage, and help CIA paramilitaries who entered Baghdad and other cities target buildings and individuals, according to three current and former intelligence officials with knowledge of the unit.

The CIA spent millions of dollars on the Scorpions, whose existence has not been previously disclosed, even giving them former Soviet Hind helicopters. But most of the unit's prewar missions -- spray-painting graffiti on walls; cutting electricity; "sowing confusion," as one said -- were delayed or canceled because of poor training or planning, said officials briefed on the unit. The speed of the invasion negated the need for most of their missions, others said. [...]

A store closes, and a window opens...

2005-08-05T20:39:00.000-07:00

...figuratively speaking, of course. This triptych - displayed on adjacent window shutters (don't know why I didn't get a shot of them all in a row) presented itself early one morning in St. Petersburg:

Photos all taken shortly after 6am on July 5th, 2005, in the area of Gorokhovaya (formerly Dzerzhinskogo) St., St. Petersburg, Russia. Enlarging the first one will reveal that the inscription in red reads, "make art, not war," and that the head is a Jimi-Hendrix-head stencil (which I saw and photographed elsewhere later the same day):

Corner of Zhukovskogo and Vosstaniia Streets, 8:55pm, July 5.

Rural Moldovan Graffiti

2005-08-05T20:13:00.000-07:00

This is not really graffiti in the classic sense - it's more of a local motto, or a bit of wisdom that someone decided to share:

The sign reads, "Spicul pîine pe masă, pace în casă" - roughly translated, this means "A piece of bread on the table, peace in the home."

"Spicul" is the tough word to translate - in this context it means something like an ear of wheat, the head of grain depicted above the text, but I'm so far from my grandmother's agrarian roots that I'm not even sure what that's properly called in English. Thanks to the online English-Romanian-English dictionary for assistance on this.

Anyway, this optimistic maxim is on both sides of the railroad bridge which you pass under after you turn left off the M2 from Chisinau and head down the A280 through Gvozdova towards Floresti (thank you, Mapquest - yes, they have Moldova mapped in detail, for all of the Americans who don't know where it is! Go check it out, kids, and don't say you never learned anything here).

My favorite stencil

2005-08-01T16:04:00.000-07:00

I saw and photographed a lot of stencils up in St. Petersburg last month, but this one would have to be my favorite. You can just feel the artist's love for President Putin. The, uh, imagery seems so simple and inspired that it's hard to believe no one has thought of this one before. On the other hand, St. Petersburg is the capital of Russia in terms of artistic creativity, and so perhaps I should not doubt that a native of the city would be able to come up with something like this.

Or maybe [activate frantic, paranoid conspiracy threorist voice] this stencil was designed by a CIA-front NGO which is working tirelessly to bring an "orange revolution" to Russia [end paranoia].

Anyway, I wouldn't exactly say this stencil was all over the President's hometown, but I did see it in at least several places (I didn't photograph them all, though), including most prominently on Nevsky Prospekt (above right), the city's main drag.

They love you in Piter, Vladimir Vladimirovich!

At left is a closer look at the artistry, photographed on Liteiny or Vosstaniia, I can't remember where exactly.

St. Petersburg stencil graf

2005-08-01T15:48:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the better stencils I saw on my trip to St. Petersburg during the first week of July. I don't have date/time/location information for most of them, so in lieu of that I'll just provide what little captioning I can. This first one was on a booth selling tickets for a canal boat ride and was located on the Fontanka embankment (or perhaps Moika).

My memory is failing me, and since I'm posting this from far from home (from Chisinau, Moldova) I don't have my usual recourse to the date/time stamp or the ability to look at the photos in the context of the ones taken immediately before or after, which is usually how I identify where things happened.

Translation from the Russian: "How much [time] do you have left?" This photo's from a building on the embankment of the same canal as the one above.

Are you ready? This one is from Dumskaya Ulitsa.

There are plenty of mosquitoes in SPB in the summer...

From Dumskaya Ulitsa or thereabouts. No idea who this is supposed to be. Perhaps Viktor Tsoi? Tsoi was a Russian rock star (lead singer of the band "Kino") of the 1980's who died tragically in 1990 and is featured in graffiti all across the former Soviet Union. The most common phrase, which I've seen in both Chisinau and Tashkent, not to mention all over Moscow and St. Petersburg, is "Tsoi zhiv," or "Tsoi lives." But this stencil is probably supposed to be someone else.

This stencl "artist" didn't try too hard - this appears to be the Russian-alphabet stencil that was standard issue to all Soviet schoolchildren. I am pretty sure I have one of these in storage...

The mark of ДСПА (DSPA), Dvizhenie Soprotivleniia imeni Petra Alekseeva (the Pyotr Alekseev Opposition Movement), a group which has hung Putin in effigy and hung banners with messages rude to the Russian commander-in-chief - no wonder their website, dspa.spb.ru, indexed just six weeks ago by Rambler, can no longer be found at the same URL.

[Update 11/13/05 - thanks to "anonymous" from DSPA for commenting and cluing me in to their new website: dspa.info]

It's unclear what "Louis & urban fathers" have to do with the prominent hemp leaf on their stencil. Dealers? Consumers? One of the mysteries of graf... Above the stencil is the tag of T-Albert, ubiquitous in St. Petersburg.

New on the web - Russian stencil art community @ LiveJournal

2005-06-13T23:24:00.000-07:00

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

2005-06-09T15:45:00.000-07:00

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!

2005-06-04T18:22:00.000-07:00

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!"

Spring is in the air

2005-05-05T09:38:00.000-07:00

We're finally experiencing a day that is sunny and more or less warm here in Moscow, and I think this graffito (1/2 of a beautiful butterfly, in case you can't tell) is appropriate to the mood outside:

In the entryway to a graffiti-rich courtyard off Kamergersky Pereulok, 7:00pm, March 26.

Stencil wisdom

2005-04-28T23:57:00.000-07:00

I am planning a larger post on stencils. I've found quite a few interesting ones since Chris was kind enough to share his photo archive with me and I posted selections from it. But the ones in this post don't really fit in with the other stencil graf I've seen.

I happened upon these tiny gems the other day in a courtyard off of Bolshoi Patriarshy Pereulok. At first I almost didn't notice them among the other graffiti:

Then I realized that these tiny (roughly 2" X 4" or 5 X 10 cm) stencils carry classic counterculture/subversive ideas of a magnitude quite out of proportion to their physical size.

"Imitate yourself!'

"You grow dull in an office!" (with a presumably intentional spelling error)

"Stop history!"

All photos taken around 1pm, April 26, 2005.

Political graffiti in North Korea?

2005-04-28T08:42:00.000-07:00

While I hesitate to stray from this blog's stated topical focus (Moscow graf and street art) and genre (photoblog), this article is interesting and tangentially relevant:

"A little light shines on North Korea's blackout"
By James Brooke, The New York Times, March 16, 2005 [from the Int'l Herald Tribune]

SEOUL - Halfway through a video from North Korea, the camera pans to a propaganda portrait of Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, magnificent in his general's dress uniform with gold epaulets. Scribbled in black ink across his smooth face is a demand for "freedom and democracy."

If genuine, the graffiti speaks of political opponents willing to risk execution to get their message out. If staged, the video means that a North Korean hustler was willing to deface a picture of the "Dear Leader" to earn a quick profit by selling it to a South Korean human rights group.

Either way, the 35-minute video is the latest evidence that new ways of thinking are stealing into North Korea, perhaps corroding the steely controls on ideology and information that have kept the Kim family in power for almost 60 years. [...]

Kim ordered the formation of a special prosecutor's office last November to arrest people who deal in South Korean goods, largely videotapes, or who use South Korean expressions or slang, analysts in South Korea say. To crack down on home viewing of imported videotapes, the North Korean police developed the strategy of encircling a neighborhood in the evening, cutting off electricity, then inspecting players to find videotapes stuck inside, according to Young Howard, international coordinator of the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights, a Seoul-based group.

OK, so the last para is not even tangentially relevant to what's usually covered here, but you have to admit it is interesting in a scary way.

Introduction to Moscow sticker art

2005-04-28T02:51:00.000-07:00

Stickers are smaller, less readily noticed cousins of large graffiti pieces or tags. They often hide on the backs of metal signs or traffic signals, where they are most likely to go for some time without being removed. Often, the design of a sticker will be immediately familiar as belonging to a prolific graffiti writer or crew. This is a very popular form of street art in the US, and it's more and more widespread in Moscow. Here are a few examples that I've noticed recently:

"S novym godom" on street sign on Staropimenovsky Pereulok, April 21, just before 7pm. This one is rather amateurish, although in a way that makes it more charming.

"Moora destroy this town" - the photo is of a ski-mask-wearing youth brandishing a spray can, in case you couldn't tell - behind school on Degtyarny pereulok, 8:19pm, April 22.

Stickers on back of street sign, Petrovka St., 11:59am, April 23.

ag4t (the tiny caption says, "saint petersburg 01") sticker depicting the infamous "gorbaty" ("humpbacked") Zaporozhets 965 (a design based on the Fiat 600) on the back of a street sign, Petrovka St., 11:59am, April 23.

Closeup of Zachem sticker - the smaller text just repeats the word "wanted" several times - on the back of a street sign, Petrovka St., 11:59am, April 23.

This Zachem sticker has a judge saying, "3 years for sure" (3 goda bezuslovno) a play on words achieved by adding a prefix to the adverb uslovno, which in Russian both means "conditional" and refers to a suspended sentence. On the back of a street sign, Petrovka St., 12 noon, April 23.

Waste & Sick Systems stickers on back of a street sign, Bol. Dmitrovka St., 12:36pm, April 23.

Sticker parodying real estate ads (the text reads, "Will rent! Will let!") on an air-conditioning unit in the entrance hall to the Tverskaya & Pushkinskaya metro stations, 12:49am, April 24.

On another air-conditioning unit in the entrance hall to the Tverskaya & Pushkinskaya metro stations, 12:49am, April 24. I've seen this blue/green up/down arrow design elsewhere on walls, although I'm not sure what it means.

MNE, the spiral (which I've seen painted on walls also), and something incomprehensible with a balalaika, on an air-conditioning unit in the entrance hall to the Tverskaya & Pushkinskaya metro stations, 12:49am, April 24.

SAC sticker (the masked youth in this image is making a couple of rude gestures, just in case you can't make that out) on the side of a traffic signal at the corner of Tverskaya Ulitsa and Gazetny Pereulok. In the background are WWII-era trucks rehearsing for the Victory Day parade. 8:07pm, April 25.

Stickers on back of a traffic signal at the corner of Tverskaya Ulitsa and Gazetny Pereulok, 8:07pm, April 25.

Stickers on back of a traffic signal at the corner of Tverskaya Ulitsa and Kamergersky Pereulok, 8:40pm, April 25.

Stickers (including repeats of the cheese grater and the spiky dog, a sticker by Moora, and one by fairly prolific writer Bigud' - the word is the singular form, which doesn't exist in the dictionary, of "bigudi," which is how you say "hair curlers" in Russian) on the back of a traffic signal on Triumfal'naia Square, 10:09pm, April 26.

NЁK

2005-04-28T01:16:00.000-07:00

Here is a writer (or crew) who is up all over downtown Moscow:

NЁK (in blue) and other graffiti in a courtyard off Varsonof'evsky Pereulok, 5:50pm, March 26.

On a utility building in a courtyard between Bolshoi Patriarshy Pereulok (Lane) and Spiridon'evsky Pereulok, 6:08pm, April 12.

In a courtyard just off Krasina St., 6:26pm, April 13.

Looks like this one got interrupted and therefore is just an outline - Krasina St., 6:34pm, April 14.

In the context of beer-swilling locals (NЁK is at far right) in the area between the Boulevard Ring and Patriarchs' Ponds, April 16 around 4:30

Close-up of the same wall, around 4:30pm, April 16.

On a utility shed in the area between the Boulevard Ring and Patriarchs' Ponds, around 4:30, April 16.

Alongside stencils in entryway leading to the graffiti-rich courtyard off Kamergersky Pereulok, shortly after 7pm, April 17.

The NWP ("North-West Project") website has several pages of NЁK tags - some of them are really amazing.

The same site also has a page with a couple of great stencils.

MNE (or MHE?) Crew

2005-04-27T08:43:00.000-07:00

As with many tags here in Moscow, the reading of this one depends on whether you think the writer is using Cyrillic or Latin letters. Since "MNE" has meaning in Russian (as I've mentioned previously, it's the dative of "me," e.g., "give it to me" would be "dai mne"), in addition to probably being an acronym, that's my guess on how the letters are supposed to be read, not that it's tremendously important.

MNE Crew on fence ironwork, Petrovsky Pereulok, 12:47pm, April 23.

Zachem, again (and again, and again...)

2005-04-25T03:25:00.000-07:00

I have more photos than I know what to do with of creative street art by the person or persons using the name "Zachem" - stencils, stickers, elaborate graffiti...all will be published here in due time. Meanwhile, here's one of the ones I like best:

Zachem stencil and the little beast I've seen in the past next to HAM's tag (to the right) at the corner of Sytinsky Pereulok and M. Palashevsky Pereulok, 7:58pm, April 12.

Graffiti is everywhere

2005-04-25T03:16:00.000-07:00

Inside a portable toilet on Kudrinskaya Sq., 2:18pm, March 5, 2005.

Hong Kong Graffiti

2005-04-24T22:15:00.000-07:00

Probably this first one doesn't exactly qualify as graffiti, but I liked it. This is a mural by the harbor in the fishing village of Tai O on Lantau Island, April 6.

"People's love more stronger than the wave" - a reference to the recent tsunami disaster? - April 5.

"Incarcerated minds," April 5.

Sticker art on a street sign, April 5.

Graffiti sharing an alley with a (Buddhist?) shrine, April 5.

Smiley-face along the Central-Mid-levels Escalator, April 3.

Graffiti at Mosque Junction, April 3.

"Insane" on street box in Central, April 3.

"Insane" next to a Reebok store in Kowloon, April 7.

Stencil Graffiti from Hong Kong

2005-04-24T19:17:00.000-07:00

At long last, I've gotten around to uploading and organizing some of the photos from our trip to Hong Kong earlier this month. I'm breaking up my graffiti photos from the trip into stencils and all others - here are the stencil ones:

Stencils of skaters, April 3.

Large stencil of crouching guy, April 3.

Stencil of guy spraypainting, April 5.

"No farting" sticker and "start" stencil, April 5.

Stencil of two women, April 5.

Rooster stencil on utility cabinet, April 5.

Rooster stencil on Central-Mid-levels Escalator, April 3.

Rooster stencil (red this time) & "adlib" tag in near-perfect courier font, April 5.

Wall of stencil graffiti, including a life-sized man with a gun to his head (photographed from far away), April 6.

Close-up of some of the smaller stencils on the wall shown above, April 6.

Ramzai ice-cream and graffiti on Tverskaya

2005-04-21T23:57:00.000-07:00

I happened today upon a winding series of courtyards a block long, with many abandoned buildings and graffiti EVERYWHERE. Entrance is next to Staropimenovsky Pereulok #13, if you want to check it out for yourself - I'll be posting those photos as soon as I can get them uploaded and organized.

The graf is not really the focal point of this photo, but I still like it and wanted to post it somewhere.

Graffiti on Ramzai ice-cream stand on Tverskaya St., with the Mayor's office
in the background (upper-left corner), 10:37pm, April 20.

Courtyard scene

2005-04-20T08:55:00.000-07:00

Beer-swilling locals surrounded by graffiti (including "NЁK," to whom a post will be devoted sometime soon) in the area between the Boulevard Ring and Patriarch's Ponds, April 16 around 4:30pm.

Mailbox

2005-04-20T08:51:00.000-07:00

For some reason I liked the design someone decided to put on this mailbox, although it's not exactly technically advanced. Plus, I've been told that I should have more people in my pictures, and this one fits the bill.

Malaya Bronnaya St., 7:29pm, April 12.

Turning the tables on nazi graffiti

2005-04-19T22:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes one sees unpleasant extremist graffiti - swastikas, "Skinheads," etc. - but it's not often that you see something like image below. This writer has the swastika running scared (literally crying for mommy) from an empowered Star of David. I like it.

In a courtyard between Bolshoi Patriarshy Lane and Spiridon'evsky Lane,
7:08pm, April 12.

Run, watermelon, run!

2005-04-19T22:17:00.000-07:00

Between Spiridonovka St. and Granatnyi Pereulok, 7:17pm, April 12.

[Update 11/13/05 - according to alert reader Charon (see comment below), this is not a watermelon but "a creature called Cactar from the popular Final Fantasy videogame series." I guess I am out of touch with the world of gamers and gaming...]

Graffiti at its best

2005-04-19T04:18:00.000-07:00

Lots of the graffiti that I photographed all winter has been painted over in the past couple of weeks. At first I thought it was just a spring-cleaning type of thing, now I realize (a friend pointed this out to me) that it's part of an effort by Moscow Mayor Luzhkov to clean up the city in time for all of the foreign dignitaries who will be visiting to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII on May 9th.

Luzhkov is acting in the best traditions of Potemkin, of course, but I actually don't mind seeing some of the writing that had become a familiar part of the landscape painted over. There are several reasons for this. One is that painting over graffiti just gives the writers a new, clean canvas to work with. For example, in the picture below, the "444" stencil was applied over a patch of paint that had been used to cover a "Zachem" tag (you can still see it peeking through):

Next door to the headquarters of the "Kultura"TV channel on Malaya Nikitskaya St., Apr 13.

Another reason is that it keeps the city's landscape and visual space fresh and dynamic - they can never seem to match the proper background paint color when they go to "abate" graffiti here in Moscow, so you get all sorts of interesting pink patches on yellow buildings and the like. Finally, I can't complain when graffiti is painted over because the ephemerality of it is one of the major reasons why I photograph street art in the first place.

All of the above notwithstanding, sometimes I see a wall and hope that it doesn't get painted over, at least not until many more people have had the chance to enjoy it. That's how I felt when I saw this:

On a utility building in the sprawling courtyard/wasteland between Spiridonovka Street and Granatnyi Pereulok, photographed around 7:15pm on April 12.

There was more interesting graf in this area (to be handled in a later post), but none that I liked as much as this one.

Comments? Props to the artist(s)?

"Graffiti Is Now Legal in Moscow"

2005-04-19T04:14:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting article...

Graffiti Is Now Legal In Moscow
Undated, from the InteractiveRussia website
[probably translated from a Russian media source]

Moscow authorities surrendered to the wall artists. Various punishments prescribed in the Russian civil code do not stop youngsters from painting walls in the Russian capital. Moscow city budget spends a lot of money on covering graffiti with fresh layers of paint, and this money is simply wasted, because after a little while new drawings emerge on the same place.

The commission of Moscow State Duma on Social Policies wants to negotiate an agreement with the street artists. Young people that do graffiti will form their own Association with the support of the Moscow government. They will get fences and walls for painting and special areas where they can arrange graffiti competitions. In return, the youngsters should be fighting disorganized street vandals on with their own means.

Wall art is just being born in Russia, and very frequently the word “graffiti” is used to refer to any decent or indecent inscription scratched on a fence.

In any case it looks like the initiative of the Moscow government will fail. The reason for this would be the conflict of interests – graffiti fans think that their masterpieces should be observed by as many people as possible. But it seems doubtful that the Mayor of the Russian capital will leave the walls in Moscow’s downtown to the mercy of the street artists.

At the moment, let me tell ya, they are definitely at the mercy of the street artists.

Moscow Ganja et cetera - graffiti from Granatnyi Pereulok

2005-04-19T03:57:00.000-07:00

Yes, Virginia, there IS a dope-smoking subculture in Moscow. Chalk it up to the evils of capitalism, I guess...

This and all of the other photos in this post were taken behind or around the Moscow Humanitarian Pedagogical Institute (MGPI in Russian) building on Granatnyi Pereulok (a "Moscow's Best Addresses"-type of neighborhood; Brezhnev once lived on this block), on April 13 of this year around 6pm.

"Hits" tag on sign in front of MGPI building.

"Hits" on a door painted with the number "5," on the
back of the MGPI building.

Random design on a wall behind the MGPI building.

Illegible but pretty graf (and a cool, very old-style address
number "29" - I've never seen one like this before) on the
door of a neighboring building.

Graf on a gate behind the MGPI building.

Graffiti - including a musical note - on a wall behind the MGPI building.

Graffito - I can't figure out what it says, either - on a wall behind MGPI.

Large "Losers" throw-up on a wall next door to MGPI.

Fresh...and intriguing

2005-04-19T02:30:00.000-07:00

The symbol below has appeared in the past 24 hours in several places on Tverskaya between Pushkin and Triumfal'naia Squares. What does it mean?

Mamonovsky Pereulok just off Tverskaya, 8:25pm, April 18.

Some Hong Kong street art

2005-04-16T04:08:00.000-07:00

Difficult as it may be to believe, the lack of recent posting in this space has been due to me having TOO MUCH material to post. I have been busy since we got back from HK last week photographing lots of new graffiti, just as the spring cleaning brigades have been painting over much of the graf that I was able to capture over the winter. Seasonal change has an impact on graffiti, too...

Here are a few photos pulled off my cell phone from a day in Hong Kong when our camera's battery ran out. All are from April 6 and were taken in the small town of Stanley on Hong Kong Island.

Graffiti near the bus stop.

Sticker art.

More sticker art - "Leave me here" is what the guy is saying.

Stay tuned...

2005-04-02T04:38:00.000-08:00

OK, we're leaving for the airport in a few hours to go to Hong Kong for a week. Hopefully I'll bring back some interesting street art photos from there. I will post from there if it's feasible, but it may be hard to upload photos.

Future plans for this blog include a greatly expanded links section, and publication of many photos I've already taken but not yet had the chance to post, and many more photos which I have yet to take.

Graffiti - and bunnies! - under the watchful eye of the FSB

2005-04-02T04:32:00.000-08:00

Walking home last Saturday from the Biblio-Globus bookstore, I happened into a side-street that amazed me with the amount of graffiti it contained. Clearly a crew of writers had spent some serious time on this street. Much to my surprise, I saw that the street - Furkasovsky Pereulok - is literally around the corner from the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the KGB, now known as the FSB. All of these photos were taken on March 26th between 5:17 and 5:26pm (once I saw the FSB guard, I knew I had to photograph in a hurry or someone would get suspicious):

Zachem - my introduction to Furkasovsky Pereulok.

Assorted tags, including Zachem and Sac, another familiar one.

Street sign flanked by banner ads in the display windows of a gift store.

Elaborate "Waste" tag.

Just like on the hot-dog stand in this post, Ches is up in the middle of
someone's marketing plan.

Vostok tag, and a squiggly mark seeming to identify this all as the handiwork
of the MNE 1 crew.

"Trago" tag on the window of what seems to be a defunct store.

"Seks" - a tag that's all over downtown - on the next store window over.

Another sighting of the bunny first spotted on 2nd Brestskaya St.

"Waste" again.

Another bunny rabbit.

Freaky stencil graffiti - some kind of face.

Abandoned store entrance (note Zachem in red on the glass).

One last bunny.

Looking toward Lubyanka - the infamous building is the yellow-and-pinkish
one in the background at the far right.

Dreams

2005-04-02T03:58:00.000-08:00

This tag reads "мечты," which means "Dreams" in Russian:

2nd Brestskaya St. #5 (Mosproekt building), 11:21pm, March 31.

Yuri

2005-04-02T03:56:00.000-08:00

I have seen this guy's tag all over town.

Near the Proletarskaya metro station, 2:16pm, March 26.

Brussels graffiti

2005-04-02T03:12:00.000-08:00

This may be a bit off-topic, but I found so much interesting street art in such a small area when I was in Brussels a couple of weeks ago that it seems worthy of sharing. All of these photos were taken in the general vicinity of Avenue Louise at Stephanie Square. I was pleased to find in Brussels all of the same forms of graffiti/street art that one finds anywhere else - elaborate throw-ups, simpler tags, stickers (which I liked better than any I've ever seen before), and stencil graffiti.

Large throw-up in a pedestrian underpass under Avenue Louise, 3:02pm, March 14.

"Shine invasion" stencil graffiti in pedestrian underpass, 3:04pm, March 14 .

Graffiti'ed door in pedestrian underpass, 3:04pm, March 14.

Sticker, Stephanie Square, 3:14pm, March 14.

Tagged bench on Stephanie Square, 2:12pm, March 15.

Tagged bench (closeup) in BR, 2:12pm, March 15.

VIP tags on Avenue Louise, 2:13pm, March 15.

VIP tag (closeup), 2:13pm, March 15. I was surprised to see a tag
like this in Brussels - I would have expected to see something
like this in Moscow, where the term "VIP" is used and abused
by way too many service providers and establishments.

Stencil graffiti - looks like organs to me - on a sign, 2:20pm, March 15.

Wall across the street from the house where Audrey Hepburn was born, on
Keyenveld St., 2:22pm, March 15.

"Bubble" tag across the street from the house where Audrey Hepburn was born,
Keyenveld St., 2:22pm, March 15.

Sticker on lamppost, 2:24pm, March 15.

Tag on storefront, 2:27pm, March 15.

L'ove Nio tag (can someone tell me what this means?), 2:27pm, March 15.

Tagged-up gate to construction site, 3:24pm, March 15

"Bubble" tag, 3:27pm, March 15.

Tagged "no parking" sign, 3:28pm, March 15.

"Destroy" tag, 3:29pm, March 15.

Pro-United Russia graffiti artist derided as "toy" - exclusive photos

2005-04-01T03:01:00.000-08:00

Out by the Preobrazhenskaya Ploshchad' metro station, someone decided it would be a good idea to beautify a utility building by painting pretty pictures on it, including one wall featuring the symbols of the United Russia, Putin's lapdog party in the Russian parliament. The snowdrifts made it hard to capture (as they do with lots of large graffiti at this time of year), but the United Russia motifs are all unmistakably there: the bear, the flag, and the name (you can just see the tops of the letters).

For his (her?) work, this patriotic painter was rewarded by being tagged with the epithet "toy," a term of derision in both the hip-hop and the graffiti worlds. The same artist met the same fate on the other sides of this building:

One side (w/Edinaya Rossiya symbols) of "officially" graffiti'd utility
building near Preobrazhenskaya Ploshchad' metro, 6:15pm, March 19.

One side of "officially" graffiti'd utility building near Preobrazhenskaya
Ploshchad' metro, 6:14pm, March 19.

One side of "officially" graffiti'd utility building near
Preobrazhenskaya Ploshchad' metro, 6:14pm, March 19.

Mambo

2005-04-01T02:13:00.000-08:00

Mambo graffito in alley between Gasheka St. and Garden Ring, 2:21pm, March 19.

Moscow stencil graf

2005-03-25T23:09:00.000-08:00

Earlier I posted a bunch of stencil graffiti, principally from St. Petersburg - I haven't really seen much intelligent stencil graf in Moscow. Fortunately, Chris "Two-Zero," a fellow expat in Moscow who maintains a blog called Cyber-generation, saw this new project and was generous enough to share with me a bunch of pictures he's taken of stencil graffiti in downtown Moscow. Thanks, Chris!

None of the pictures in this post are mine, but I am pleased to be able to share them:

My favorite writer Zachem, in stencil form.

CinePhantom.

M26 - this appears to be a reference to some sort of weaponry.

M26 - they have more than one stencil, it seems.

"Love ready" - and popping out of the toaster.

Soldier - note the check mark on the sign, which is similar to the "V" in "Love ready" above - probably designed by the same person.

Tepee with strange implement at the bottom - and a familiar check-mark at the top.

The lettering at the bottom appears to say "СМОТРИ," or "LOOK" in Russian.

Hatching insect - cool.

3 X 10.

Why am I doing this?

2005-03-25T02:52:00.000-08:00

Some might see graffiti and street art as just more of the visual static created by a big city - like billboard ads, puddles of filth, or plastic bags spiraling in the wind, something that's there but not deserving of too much attention. But I'm not one of those people. And so I've been photographing tags and other graffiti around Moscow. If I see something I like, I try to photograph it immediately, because graffiti is often erased or painted over pretty quickly. The non-permanence of graffiti is one of the reasons why it isn't considered "art" by many; for me, it's a major reason to photograph it when I see it.

Vtroyom (втроём - this word has no exact translation,
but it refers to three items or people existing or acting
together) graffito by the exit to Tverskaya St. from the
passage underneath Pushkin Square, 6:41pm, Feb. 23.

Vtroyom graffito in the Pushkin Sq. underpass (near the exit to the
Pushkin statue), 5:01pm, Feb. 23.

In the case of the Vtroyom tags, days later there were only blurry spots on the tile walls marking the places where they had been.

Graffiti on theater poster display in the Pushkin Sq. underpass, 8:39am, Feb. 26.

These were also gone within less than a week; there were visible marks on the plexiglass where the tags had been scraped off.

Sometimes it's harder to eradicate a tag:

Not-quite-erased Zachem tag on the outside wall of the
Kinomir movie theater, Nastas'inskii pereulok, 5:05pm,
March 8.

Zachem painted over on Malaya Nikitskaya St., 2:23pm, Feb. 10.

Other times, the "graffiti abatement" specialists - or perhaps just property owners who want a clean storefront - are more successful:

Traces of graffiti, Pl. Tverskoi Zastavy, March 12, 10:22am.

The point is, for better or for worse, so much of the most prominently placed graffiti in any big city is not there for very long before it is erased, painted over, or altered in some drastic way. Therefore, I feel compelled to record the moment in time when I see it.

An evening on Tverskaya

2005-03-24T03:08:00.000-08:00

Tverskaya can probably be considered the main street of Moscow. We are lucky enough to live on it, and tonight I met Lorina after work (after 9pm for both of us!) and we walked home up Tverskaya, with breaks for dinner, book shopping, and grocery shopping along the way. We saw a lot of graffiti:

A young couple gets cozy near a utility box which sports the tag "Mne" repeatedly. "Mne" is the dative case of "I" (as in "me, myself, and I"), so it is used in constructions like "give it to me," or "Dai Mne," which happens to be the title of a much-hyped book book by young Russian writer Irina Denezhkina - the recent English translation was titled Give Me, although I would have translated it as Give It to Me. Maybe that's why I'm not a professional translator. But I digress. In the graffiti context, Mne might just be an abbreviation for some 3-word phrase. KGM, for example (shown in an earlier post) actually stands for "Krasim Gorod Moskva," or "We Paint the City of Moscow." This scene is from the corner of Kamergersky Lane & Tverskaya, 9:14pm.

Tags - Waste, Na Vostok (this loosely translates as "Eastward" or "Toward the Orient"), and an illegible one - on a theater kiosk on Tverskaya (yes, "Cats" has made it to Russia - it's even being performed in Russian), 10:06pm.

Ornate but illegible tag ("The [something]") on the shutter of a closed kiosk in the pedestrian underpass by the book store at Tverskaya 8, 11:18pm.

Zachem tag on the other side of the same kiosk in the same underpass, 11:18pm.

Well-placed graffiti on the Stardogs stand (formerly a "Stop-top" stand, if you haven't been in Moscow in awhile - they rebranded all of them last year), across Tverskaya from the book store, 11:19pm.

A graffiti writer who goes by the handle "Waste" has helpfully labeled this trash can for English-speaking visitors to Moscow, on Tverskaya just toward the center from Pushkin Sq., 11:38pm.

Various graffiti, including "Mne" on the door to a while-you-wait key shop, Maly Palashevsky Lane just off Tverskaya, 11:43pm. Yes, that is an obscene graffito right there in the middle. Apologies to English-speakers who are offended. As for the other tags, "Ham" (or perhaps "Nam," depending on whether you think the tagger was using the Latin or Cyrillic alphabet) is one I've seen around and have some photos of, but BiF is one I hadn't seen before this evening.

FTM ("For The Masses"?) stencil, Maly Palashevsky Lane just of Tverskaya, 11:45pm.

Shadowboxing; a post on commercial stencil graffiti

2005-03-23T02:22:00.000-08:00

Using stencil graffiti as a medium for a commercial "guerilla marketing" campaign is nothing new, but it's not something you see every day in Moscow. So I was startled to see a cluster of identical stencils near the Shchyolkovskaya metro station, evidently promoting "Shadowboxing," a recently released Russian movie. The caption reads, "Бой с тенью," or "Shadowboxing."

11:21am, March 19.

Entrance to the Shchyolkovskaya station, 12:55pm, March 19.

12:55pm, March 19.

2 stencils - one at far left - on a bus stop shelter, along with two "Isk"
tags and a scavenger picking up a recyclable bottle, 12:57pm, March 19.

Shadowboxing with a pay phone, 12:58pm, March 19.

Using counterculture media to launch corporate, commerical ad campaigns is old hat in the West, and it's not a brand-new (so to speak) idea in Moscow, either. Below is a remnant of one such campaign from last year, when Adidas had these stickers all over the city - shortly before the official portion of the campaign, including trolleybuses painted with full-length versions of this sticker. I wonder if they did this in other cities?

"I [Adidas] Moscow" sticker on an outdoor ashtray/trash
can near the Voikovskoe metro station, 3:30pm, March 19.

Hurrah!

2005-03-23T01:46:00.000-08:00

The flag reads, URA! - in Russian, this means, Hurrah!

Not clear what was being cheered.

In an alleyway just off 2nd Brestskaya St., 3:05pm, March 10.

Sick and the City

2005-03-20T03:40:00.000-08:00

Veronica at Neeka's Backlog has a great photo of a bit of Moscow stencil graffiti which reads "sick and the city." Definitely worth checking out.

Zachem! (Why!)

2005-03-19T02:34:00.000-08:00

Zachem (From the Multitran online dictionary: зачем [phonetically: Zachem] нареч. why; wherefore; for what; what for?; whereto) is the most prolific writer in my neighborhood (downtown Moscow around Pushkin Square), but his reach extends far beyond that as well.

In an earlier post on my other blog, Scraps of Moscow, I pontificated on the significance of this handle and noted that one could spend lots of time trying to track down all of the Zachem tags in my area. The photos below were all chance encounters with Zachem - I didn't seek the tag out, just happened to have a camera with me while out and about. The first 3 photos are from St. Petersburg (told you this guy gets around) and the rest are from Moscow:

Zachem among other graffiti in courtyard off #61 Liteiny,
SPB, Feb. 13, 12:53pm.

Zachem on Zhukovskogo St., SPB, 2:42pm, Feb. 13.

Zachem (atop a yellow sign directing people to a beauty salon) on
Zhukovskogo St. in SPB, 2:43pm, March 3.

Zachem on window on Tverskoi Bul'var, 8:38pm, Feb. 22.

Zachem on wall with Russian flag flapping above, on
Tverskoi Bul'var, 8:35pm, Feb. 22.

Zachem graffito next to grocery store window on Sadovo-Triumfal'naya St.,
4:31pm, Feb. 25.

Zachem on an abandoned building in the Patriarch's
Ponds area, 6:27pm, Feb. 26.

Zachem and others on an old ATM-type machine in the
entrance hall to the Tverskaya and Pushkinskaya
metro stations, 9:42am, Feb. 27.

Zachem in Maly Palashevsky Lane just off of Tverskaya
Street, 2:34pm, Feb. 27.

Zachem and others on store door on Tverskaya St., 9:59am,
March 2.

Zachem (in black - and a different script than usual) on a theater ticket
kiosk on Tverskaya St., 9:10am, March 4.

Zachem on netting surrounding a building undergoing
renovation at the corner of Rozhdestvenka and Kuznetsky
Most Sts., 5:17pm, March 6.

Zachem and others in one of the archways from Rozhdestvenka St. leading
to the entrance to the Kuznetsky Most metro station, 5:50pm, March 6.

Zachem (multiple times) and others on the Moscow News kiosk on Pushkin
Square, 4:31pm, March 8.

Zachem with Women's Day flower sellers, seen as one
descends the stairs into the underground passageway
underneath Pushkin Square, 5:01pm, March 8.

Note: all photos are from 2005; the first 3 are from St. Petersburg, and the rest are from Moscow.

Lesnaya St.

2005-03-18T23:54:00.000-08:00

Large piece on the side of a 4-storey building, Lesnaya
Street, 10:26am, March 12, 2005.

Bunny rabbit art

2005-03-18T21:37:00.000-08:00

This requires no comment, except to mention that it definitely elevated our mood when we saw it and that it appeared on March 8th, International Women's Day:

Bunny graffiti (and something purple and less identifiable) on abandoned
building on the corner of 2nd Brestskaya and Gasheka Streets, 12:54pm, March 8, 2005.

From St. Petersburg

2005-03-15T20:47:00.000-08:00

"Moscow Graffiti" is beginning to seem like a misnomer for this site, with all of the photos from St. Petersburg that I have been posting. These are left over from a couple of recent trips; hopefully I'll be up there again soon, as the writers there seem to be more creative and there are certainly more stencils I didn't get the chance to photograph. But I do have more Moscow material to come and will be publishing it in the next few days, time permitting. Anyway, here are some more street and courtyard scenes from SPB:

KGM tag (and passer-by's shadow) on Vosstaniia St.
near Moscow Station 2:17pm, March 3, 2005.

Tribute to glue ("klei"), a favorite way to get high for down-and-out
and/or homeless adolescents in Russia, 5:02pm, March 3, 2005, on the
Fontanka Canal Embankment.

Graffiti crossed out by an apparently religious (that's
a Russian Orthodox cross in light blue) tagger activist,
seen on Nevsky Prospekt, 4:37pm, March 3, 2005. I saw
this same phenomenon elsewhere in SPB.

Graffiti on a wall in a courtyard off Zhukovskogo St., 1:53pm, March 3,
2005. Note at far right the "official" graffiti - a stenciled notice advising
people of the number to call to report a fire - and above it all a sign
advertising automobile window tinting.

My friend Bram surveying graffiti in a courtyard off
Liteiny Prospekt, 12:54pm, Feb. 13, 2005.

More graffiti in the same courtyard off Liteiny Prospekt,
12:54pm, Feb. 13, 2005. This courtyard can be reached by
entering the courtyard of #61 Liteiny, then proceeding
through another archway that houses the entrance to
an antiquarian bookstore (that's how I originally found
this place), which takes you into this small, triangular,
graffiti-ed to the hilt courtyard.

The metro as canvas

2005-03-14T22:32:00.000-08:00

Sometimes graffiti can turn up in the most unexpected places:

"Waste" tag on metro escalator railing - I have seen tags on many Moscow
metro escalator railings.

"Sac" tag on metro turnstiles - in hot pink! - very creative placement.

Both photos taken at the Belorusskaya station (Lesnaya St. entrance) around 11am on March 12, 2005.

Blue line graffiti

2005-03-14T21:45:00.000-08:00

The dark-blue line of the Moscow metro is one of the older lines, which means some of the downtown stations have the spectacular and grandiose design that the Moscow metro is known for. It also goes above ground closer to the end of the line, and there always seems to be graffiti along train rights-of-way.

"Isk" ("иск") graffito in the Ploshchad' Revoliutsii station (it may be
difficult to see since it was done with a narrow marker on the dark
background of the edge of the bench, toward the bottom of the photo in
the center). What I like about this tag is that while it's a word in Russian
that means "lawsuit," it's also the root of the verb iskat' (искать), which
means "to search or seek." What I like about this photo is the guy sleeping
on the next bench over.

Graffiti visible (on prefab garages, I think) from the blue line somewhere
past the Izmailovsky Park station.

This is a special train car designed, I assume, to do repairs on the metro
tracks. It was parked and snowed in at the small train yard which comes
after the Semyonovskaya station, actually between the Izmailovsky Park
and Izmailovskaya stations, to be exact. It had another cab at the other
end of the scaffolding, which had some less interesting graffiti on it. I
couldn't get the whole contraption in my viewfinder, unfortunately.

All photos from between 10:30am and 1:30pm, Feb. 19, 2005.

Stencil graffiti around the world

2005-03-14T20:50:00.000-08:00

I have noticed lots of "stencil graffiti" in St. Petersburg and not nearly as much in Moscow, although maybe I'm just not looking in the right places.

"Graffiti Can't Be Stopped" stencil, 3:20pm,
Feb. 13, 2005, Zhukovskogo Street, St. Petersburg.

The caption on this reads (in translation): "I didn't go
to work today... ...I don't think I'll go tomorrow." Seen
on Zhukovskogo St. in St. Petersburg, 2:39pm, March 3, 2005.

The caption reads, "Be alert - you are being watched. Seen on a side street
(I can't remember which) off Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, 4:58pm,
March 3, 2005.

The Mona Lisa as a drunk - the caption reads, "Alko."
Seen on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and a cross street
(can't recall which), 4:37pm, March 3, 2005.

The caption reads, "Get a hold of yourself" (literally, "Hold yourself in
your hands"). Seen in an archway off Zhukovskogo Street, 2:40pm, March 3, 2005.

I was considering the possibility that the English-language stencil I saw in St. Petersburg might be a result of Finnish artists coming down there (as Finns are wont to do to engage in all kinds of bad behavior), but that doesn't explain the ones in Russian.

I haven't seen any like them in Moscow - the only stencil graffiti I've seen there is without any apparent message.

The caption reads "Konyok," which has many meanings
(according to Multitran ), including one which
refers to a type of bird. Who knows what this symbol
really means. Seen on Kuznetsky Most St. in Moscow,
5:15pm, March 6, 2005.

Stencil graffiti in its broader context...

...and close up. A bar code intertwined with flowers. No doubt someone's
trying to say something with this. Seen on Tverskaya St. near Pushkin
Square in Moscow, 5:00pm, March 6, 2005.

This last one is from Washington, DC, my
hometown. The caption reads (in case you
don't want to click on and expand the picture)
"Our dreams cannot fit in their ballot boxes."
Seen at the corner of Albemarle and 43rd
(I think) Sts., Northwest, on January 15, 2005.

As it turns out, stencil graffiti is a phenomenon that the web already has covered - no surprise there, I guess. Googling that last phrase (about the dreams and ballot boxes) led me to a blog called Madison Art Crime Collective , which has a post with a similar stencil seen in Madison, Wisconsin (coincidentally, my father's hometown).

I especially liked that blog's inaugural post, which seems to serve as a sort of mission statement as well as breaking down some of the differences between different graffiti styles for the uninitiated. An excerpt:

I am going to do my best to photo-document Madison art graffiti as much as possible (any and all submissions are welcome) so that it can be admired/ridiculed/etc. I am going to focus primarily on stencil graffiti, but I will let this blog develop as the art does. Two reason for singling out stencil graff: 1) unlike "tagging", the work tends to be more premeditated and concerned with both aesthetics and message.* 2) one year ago there was little, if any, stencil work to be found in Madison, but since this summer, shazam!There is change in the air and this forum is here to give it voice!

*a word to the taggers: I'm not trying to start a war here, there are truly amazing tagging works out there and they are all the more amazing for having been painstakingly hand done and out of sight of the popo's. However, they are usually in hard to reach/edge of town areas for the same reason. Also, there are far too many egoists who are running around scrawling their names on things without creating art. Art isn't about fame, it's the love baby, the love!

MACC led me in turn to the Milwaukee Stencil Graffiti Map Project - a website that's a bit hard to navigate but is an interesting concept - an interactive city map with photos of graffiti- and to the Stencil Revolution website, which has galleries of lots of stencil work, and also to the Wooster Collective website - "A Celebration of Street Art."

Wooster Collective in turn led me to a website called Streetmeme , also focused on stencil graffiti. Getting away from the stencil focus, Wooster Collective also links to Streets Are Saying Things - "The original online graffiti museum."

I get the feeling that I'm just scratching the surface of the graffiti-themed material that's out there on the WWW.

Coincidence? Or a sign of the times...

2005-03-12T00:24:00.000-08:00

Tonight as I walked home from work and pondered the large number of photos of the work of Moscow and St. Petersburg taggers and graffiti artists that I have built up and want to share with people who may be interested in this sort of thing, I decided that the best way to do so would be to start a new blog.

My first project, Scraps of Moscow, is nearly 5 months old and going strong, but I am trying to avoid clogging it with graffiti photos that have more of a niche appeal. I have put up several posts (here, here, and here) with photos and commentary on Moscow and St. Petersburg graffiti, but I have many more photos that I feel compelled to organize in blog form. Mainly this phenomenon interests me because it seems relatively new. Of course, there have always been people writing things on walls here as anywhere else, even in Soviet times, but only in the past year (or really more like the past six months) have tags started to crop up with substantial density on the walls of buildings (not just in courtyards, either - often on the street side) in downtown Moscow.

Anyway, I had decided to start this new project, mainly for myself, though hopefully it will find a small audience of people interested in these things, so imagine my surprise when I opened the Moscow Times to the weekend arts and entertainment section, "Context," and found a story about a soon-to-be-launched magazine focused on Moscow graffiti, Code Red.

I guess I'm not the only one who has noticed the trend. To judge from the preview of the magazine provided on its website, the publication will focus on more advanced artwork than one generally comes across just walking around downtown - they clearly know the spots where the artists work - but I notice that they have at least one pic on the montage page of a "Zachem" tag. I have a whole portfolio of that tagger's work at this point, which is just one of the reasons why I felt the need to start this new project - as I have time, I will post photos from the archive I've already amassed, and of course I will seek out new tags and interesting street art as I have time to do so.

For the time being (as you wait for the first crop of photos), the Moscow Times article mentioned above can be read in its entirety below:

Street Spreads
The creators of Code Red, Russia's first professional-quality magazine devoted to graffiti, say their craft should be taken seriously.
By Brian Droitcour
March 11, 2005

Code Red, Russia's first professional-quality magazine devoted to graffiti, will bring the art of the streets to bookshelves. Besides allowing graffiti writers to review the work of their peers and idols, the magazine may also interest specialists in contemporary art, who are beginning to study graffiti more seriously, and corporate designers, who use graffiti-inspired motifs in marketing products to young audiences.

The magazine skimps on text but is generous with images, allowing its "readers" to draw their own conclusions. Most of the first issue's 68 pages are devoted to photographs of graffiti. Some spreads examine the work of a single graffiti writer, while others report on festivals, such as last August's "Meeting of Styles," which drew artists from Eastern Europe and Germany to Gomel, Belarus. Another spread, titled "Germany," presents the work of that country's best-known graffiti writers.

The virtual absence of text is designed to help Code Red reach an international audience. This goal is made clear on the first page, where the editors' introductory letter is printed in both English and Russian.

"Until recently, Russian graffiti hasn't been taken seriously abroad," Dmitry Krokhin, the magazine's editor, said Saturday. But Krokhin, who writes graffiti under the pseudonym Oskes with the collective Absurdmafia, believes graffiti in Russia has reached a level of sophistication near that in countries where graffiti has been practiced much longer. As proof, he points to the development of distinct schools of graffiti in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Krokhin said he prefers the St. Petersburg style, which is sprawling and chaotic, to the discrete elements and logo-like shapes common in Moscow.

Krokhin said that his European contacts have already displayed interest in Code Red, partly because it is superior in quality to the homemade "zines" that prevail among graffiti publications in the West. "Zines are things people make and distribute on their own money," he said. "Because the standard of living in Russia is different, you can't afford to spend that much time on something and not profit from it."

Besides appealing to their foreign peers, Code Red's creators hope to earn the respect of Russians who would normally pay little attention to graffiti. The editor's letter states that Code Red aims to "form an unbiased opinion about Russian graffiti, that it's not just a 'teenage pastime' (as most representatives of the media and ordinary people trained in the academic art tradition think), but a serious modern cultural trend.

"While graffiti writers may never get much respect from law enforcement officers charged with preventing vandalism, they are already getting attention from "the academy." Last weekend's release party of Code Red coincided with the final days of "Collaborators," an exhibition at the New Tretyakov Gallery that showed the work of Absurdmafia along with that of artists who have already been canonized as classics of contemporary Russian art, like painters Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid.

However, Andrei Yerofeyev, the main curator of "Collaborators," drew a line between graffiti and the kind of contemporary art typically found in galleries and museums. While graffiti is a significant influence on contemporary art, he said, its origins and practice have more in common with folk art. Yerofeyev compared graffiti to the African ceremonial masks that influenced Cubist painting and the drawings by children and the insane that fascinated the Surrealists. "Artists live in their reflections," Yerofeyev said. "Graffiti is something that people just do."

Graffiti writers like Krokhin distinguish their craft from contemporary art, as well as from commercial projects, which they also engage in. While Absurdmafia has participated in museum exhibitions and worked on corporate commissions, such as snowboard designs for Rossignol, Krokhin described these experiences as fundamentally different from creating street graffiti, where he is free to do whatever he pleases and any object is a potential canvas. "[Companies] pay me and I always work responsibly, regardless of whether or not I enjoy it," Krokhin wrote in an e-mail Wednesday. "For an exhibition in a museum, I'm working more for myself and can carry out my ideas as I planned."

The creators of Code Red hope to bring graffiti to a wide audience while preserving the spirit of the street. The magazine will be on sale in a number of locations that cater to free spirits, like the OGI chain of bookstore cafes and United Styles hip-hop stores.