triggerhappymedia

A belated recap of my 2009 in photos. Here’s to a healthy 2010!

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OUTLAW - Shot in the Dark
A DROME magazine and Lomography Photo Competition

Have you ever walked down a dark ally with your beloved LC-A in hand? Have you ever seen a vandalized building and couldn’t help but to admire that urban art covering the walls? Share this rawness from the streets with us! In this collaboration with Lomography, we are looking for your best images of stencils, posters, stickers, graffiti or any other form or “illegal expression” that you can find on the streets…

The winners will receive a Staple Colorsplash camera and a feature spot in DROME magazine. One important rule: Lomography will only accept photos taken with analogue cameras. None of the following would qualify, but it was a nice excuse to take a look back.

Banksy. London, 2004

Orgasmo Roma. Rome, 2004

CCTV. Milan, 2007

Milan, 2007

 Brooklyn, 2008

Godless America. San Francisco, 2009

NYC, 2008

Freak What You Feel! Brooklyn, 2008

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Trigger: Shot in the Dark details and entry form here

The 2005 documentary Inside Outside follows eight international street artists (including Swoon, Os Gemeos, and Adams & Itso) to see what makes them tick- and ticks them off.

These days I stay in a NYC neighborhood that I don’t know very well. I am visually assaulted every time I step out my front door. Soho is just about looking like you have money. All the advertisements read fuck you for thinking that you already owned everything you want and need. Fuck the poor.

Wooster Collective was named after Wooster Street. A quick look around, and it’s impossible to tell what was so inspiring. A tag scrawled on several sidewalks and construction barricades reads “Nobody Cares.” But nobody is even here. The streets are empty, and there is nothing to see here.

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Trigger: PingMag interview with director Andreas Johnsen

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Trigger: view from the Empire State Building …and I had fun

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Trigger: The SPACE

Graffiti World: Street Art from Five Continents was a Christmas gift from my little sister. What took me until April 8th to pick it up? It’s heavy (weighs at least five pounds, hardcover, 376 pages)!! I’ve been traveling the past few months, and finally got to settle into it last night.

Over 2000 illustrations. Hard to choose the illest. What struck me was Eltono and Nuria Mora’s paintings of tuning forks and keys in Madrid. I love the simplicity, the contrast of bright colors among the old buildings. They reminded me of Zezão’s swirling patterns in the sewers of São Paulo: beauty against bleakness.

Faith 47 also has an exquisite touch, spraying her wispy designs across Cape Town’s harsh environment.

“It’s taking the stuff that everybody hates and nobody wants to see and making it more in their face. In South Africa, there are millions of people living in makeshift shacks….It’s so hard to see it all the time and not be able to change it. What can I do to save the fucking world? So I paint shacks.”

Graffiti World (HND Books, 2005) is a must-read for its vivid photography and interviews with 180 international street artists.

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Trigger: Graffiti World by Nicholas Ganz

If you don’t have something nice to say, write it on a wall.

 

 

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Trigger: walking Brooklyn

 

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Trigger: first winter snowfall of ‘07

 

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Cross it off the list: I’ve now walked New York City from top to bottom.

I met my brother and his friends on the train platform at 225th Street, where Manhattan almost touches the Bronx. The path was green and hilly as we headed through Isham Park and past the Cloisters. After that it was all concrete for the 15-mile journey.

We stopped only once for a slice of pizza. My brother gave me fair warning- if you sit down for too long, you won’t be able to get up again. So we kept going, pushing past the tourists in Midtown- and then looking like tourists ourselves in our baseball caps, sweaty T-shirts and tennis shoes- down Hudson Street and through Tribeca. Eight hours later we collapsed on the long benches at the bottom edge of Battery Park.

The cab driver didn’t ask, but I told him about my day.

“I don’t know why you did that,” he laughed, “but that’s pretty fantastic. I’ve got some aspirin somewhere here if you need one.”

For some way uptown shots (before my arms were too sore to lift the camera), click here.

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Trigger: NYC

Nice culture jam in Union Square, NYC.

This fiberglass elephant seems to be an advertisement for an upcoming circus. But a closer look reveals that the elephant is chained to the ground and crying. The sign on her back reads “See Shackles, Bullhooks, Lonliness- All Under the Big Top”.

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Trigger/Site: PETA’s Ella the elephant, in Union Square until August 20th.
Quote: “In order to force elephants and other wild animals to perform stressful and often painful acts, trainers use sharp metal bullhooks, whips, muzzles, chains, and electric prods. PETA has amassed thousands of documents showing that circuses–including Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and Cole Bros. Circus–are chronic violators of the minimum standards of the federal Animal Welfare Act.”