Written City 1: Graffiti Bridge

During my recent local photographic excursion I found myself loitering beneath two large road bridges over the River Soar.  It’s a dramatic environment of steeply raked concrete supports and sculpted embankments.  This visual dynamism was amplified by strong contrasts of deep shadow versus brilliant sunlight and brutal concrete versus lush vegetation.

I was drawn, unsurprisingly, to the tangles of tag graffiti that punctuate many of the scarred concrete surfaces.  Nowadays, these scribbles intrigue me more than the grander set piece throw-ups that occur periodically.  At points multiple layers of calligraphy merge to become an overall pattern of polychromatic loops and swirls in opposition to the linear geometry and dull greys of the architecture.  It also finds unexpected kinship in the ripples of reflected sunlight bouncing from the water onto the bridge’s underside. 

Jean Debuffet, 'Wall with Inscriptions', Oil on Canvas, 1945

I thought about graffiti again after reading the following quote from Michael Corris discussing Jean Debuffet’s ‘Wall with Inscriptions’ from ‘Art, Word and Image’. [1.]

“The primitive figure is not yet an autonomous image, but merges with the ground itself; an image, perhaps, of what the rough post-war city had to offer art as a subject of spontaneous, anarchistic self-renewal.  The inscribed wall, then, reveals a complex truth about the city as it inclines towards reconstruction and reconciliation; the sheer materiality of the surface of the wall stands in for the very matter of the city, while its presence is confirmed as a space for inscribing dreams, marking territories or to declare… one’s undying love.  The unsanctioned incursion into social space by an anonymous citizenry marks the very fabric of the city as an actor in the construction of urban life.” [2].

I’m continually fascinated by this conflation of urban materiality and the life unfolding within the city.  I think the bridge graffiti show the relationship flowing in both directions.  Just as city surfaces support inscribed expressions of escapism, constructed identity, or staked claims, their extreme stylisation and agglomeration into unreadable surface pattern reabsorb those individual voices into the physical environment.  It amounts to an ongoing dialogue between individuality and generality - between the personal voice and environmental context.

The whole graffitti/street art thing has become a mainstream industry these days and could be seen as an over-used and devalued signifier for 'the outsider'.  Yet whenever I venture out it's all still there in reality as an inescapable statement all over the city.

Only after half an hour of taking photos did I hear faint music from a phone and notice two pairs of trainers projecting from the shadows.  Two young urbanites were secluded on a hidden ledge, and had almost vanished into the structure of the bridge.





[1.]:  John Dixon Hunt, David Lomas & Michael Corris, ‘Art, Word and Image – Two Thousand Years of Visual/Textual Interraction’, London, Reaktion Books Ltd., 2010

[2.]:  John Dixon Hunt, David Lomas & Michael Corris, ‘Art, Word and Image – Two Thousand Years of Visual/Textual Interraction’, London, Reaktion Books Ltd., 2010