Studying Graffiti

Can you “study” images?  One of the photography students carries a camera at all times, and makes very consistent, composed “notes” about visual messages — graffiti — she finds, well everywhere…  She finds these–some quite striking in composition or content–where most of us almost certainly would not.  At a minimum, the photographs constitute proof of someone having “received” these anonymous messages.

On the surface of things, she is photographing “graffiti”.   But when you look at the photographs, “graffiti” would probably not be your first thought.  If the category implies various things: large-scale, say, or made in protest, or obvious, the photographs include some that are very subtle, quiet, or ambiguous.   The photographs potentially crack, refute, expand the category.  That’s what good research does.  It’s not research into “photography” per se, it’s using photographs to re-filter, refute, reform aspects of  a “knowledge” lodged in language.