Slap It! Slick Stickers Spread Across City Surfaces Speak and Surprise

Stickers, or slaps, are small but formidable graphic and text messages, especially when massed together on a doorway or light pole. They are also fast and surreptitiously placed, as simple as a gesture, undetectable in their ease of application.

A board covered with stickers at Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Begun exclusively perhaps as vehicles for handwritten or hand drawn missives, usually the tag of an artist, today they are often mass produced and designed on a screen, commercially printed on stock that is weatherproof, yet crumbles into pieces when you try to remove it. Personal and political are often on display, as well as that eternal graffiti impulse to simply spread your name.

Phil (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stickers and their creation, distribution, and collection are a culture unto themselves, with fans mounting massive sticker shows and books tracing historical roots and telling stories. On the street, just one sticker can alter your day. Because you know it is made and placed by an individual and not a corporation, it feels like a personal message. Because it is small enough for you to get close to, it becomes intimate.

Here is a selection of recent images of stickers caught by our editor of photography, Jaime Rojo, for BSA readers to get up close to.

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Above (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Elle (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cash4 and Smells with friends in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El sol25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Where is He? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist…YES!!! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

45 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Fonki World (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dceve . Croma . Above . J0eg (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Detail of the fridge door at Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art in Berlin (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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