viz.

Image Credit: Personal Photograph 

When approaching a situation from a place of unfamiliarity or doubt, long-standing habit takes me to the Oxford English Dictionary. According to this semi-sacred text, graffiti (noun), means “words or images marked (illegally) in a public place, esp. using aerosol paint.” I etched this definition onto a spare wall in my brain and set out, quite purposefully, to find some street art. I knew from casual observation that some fences outside my apartment complex, the bus stations along my street, some building walls and even the backs of some signs sport small splashes of graffiti. All that remained was determining and documenting which offerings qualified as real graffiti (once again, “words or images marked (illegally) in a public place, esp. using aerosol paint”). Simple, right?



Oh, so wrong.

 A friend tagging along, wielding our camera, first pointed to some text stretched along a newspaper stand.

Image Credit: Personal Photograph 

“Want me to get that?” He asked, good naturedly.

“Yeah! That's...Hang on.” Uncertainty immediately clouded my mind. I was pretty sure the bold red letters weren't exactly sanctioned by the government, but they bore little to no relation to the elaborate sketches I'd seen decorating other walls in the city. This was just...a name? Maybe? I leaned closer. I couldn't even make out the letters properly, but it certainly meant something to someone. Perhaps even several someones. But could it be called street art in any sense of the term? And here my OED training sort of fell apart.

What, exactly, is the nature of graffiti? Is it a type, a definable item? That didn't seem likely, given that tagging, text, names, splashes of color, images and designs all seem to qualify as graffiti. Or is it an artistic style? That seemed a little more promising, given that each example we passed as we trekked down Cameron road bore a distinct family resemblance, but that didn't seem fair, either. Is it defined by its illegality, then? Can we safely say that any display erected against the law qualifies as graffiti? Well, then, what about art done anonymously on sanctioned public walls? The OED itself includes (illegally) parenthetically, an additional, smirking bit of the denotation added, almost as an afterthought superimposed upon (and altering) the baseline definition. Maybe legality wasn't the way to go.

Is graffiti, then, none of the above? Better yet, can graffiti, by its very nature, be properly codified? Classified? Defined? Graffiti has always been one of those words I associated with rebellion, heroic individualism and youthful risk. Was it fair of me to go to a dictionary in an attempt to understand the phenomenon better? Maybe not. Perhaps graffiti was more about an ambiance instead of a definition. Perhaps I needed to trust my gut, not a rationalist approach. Surely, now I would fare better.

Oh, so wrong.

Image Credit: Personal Photograph 

As I turned from example to example, I found myself snapping multiple pictures but disregarding any highly personal messages with some embarrassment. If I could make out a legible name, I avoided a photo. If the message was hateful, I passed it by. I was drawn to samples I could a) decipher and b) appreciate. But was that fair? How can we discuss graffiti in toto without accounting for, well, every mark on every brick on every corner? At the end of an afternoon of searching, I was left with more questions than answers.

Is that the nature of graffiti?

For more on graffiti, see this week's other contributions:

What is graffiti and who does it belong to?

Graffiti as Advertisement

Jeremiah the Innocent Icon