If you can’t resist shooting vibrant street art—and few photographers can resist—you’re more or less obliged to add something extra, otherwise it’s just like a mechanical copying of art. That something usually involves a moment.
Murals, graffiti, street art, whatever you want to call it, seems irresistible for shooting. It’s because of the scale and the possibilities of illusion. Trompe l’oeil is the French term for large-scale painted areas that pretend to be what they’re not, like windows, pillars, skylights, and while contemporary street art usually does’t attempt this sleight of hand (or rather, spray can) exactly, the effect of including it in the two-dimensional frame of a photograph achieves a similar result—visual ambiguity, or at least a double-take. Part of me is always slightly suspicious of my own motives in photographing this kind of scene, because the creative work has already gone into the scene, and has been done by someone else. It verges on the other suspect prop in street photography—words.
Nevertheless, the Colombian city of Cartagena, where I’m in the middle of shooting a book, has recently had a burst of street art activity, centred around the old streets of a slightly run-down neighbourhood called Getsemani. Actually, it’s a forerunner to gentrification, but for the time being, the Spanish colonial streets are pulsing with colour. Not only that, but strong, vibrant colour.
A friend had shown me his iPhone picture of this particular mural, a huge smiling face, and I wanted it. Now, it really isn’t enough with street art just to stand on the opposite side of the road and shoot it plain. It has to come alive somehow. Usually that means a passer-by, though even this is in danger of being too predictable. So you need the right passer-by, or at least he or she should be passing by in an interesting way.
Already anticipating that, I hunted down the mural in a narrow lane. It was among others, but when it came to shooting this one, there was the problem of a delivery van parked opposite, killing a squared-up viewpoint. But wait, what about using the van, which like many things in Cartagena, is bright and colourful? The angle was very awkward, even jammed up against the wall, because I wanted space for the street art on the left and enough room for a passer-by on the pavement, and on the right I wanted just the face and arm and nothing much else that was van-like.
After that, it was a matter of waiting. Two or three people came by, but nothing special. Then this woman, and I liked the slightly awkward posture. And of course, that pink.
