We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
Sara Lynne-Leo captured the resignation and gallows humor many were feeling this year in her small scale interplay of psychological, emotional, and existential matters.
Here her small figures happen upon a “delete” key in the urban wild, but what exactly does it delete?
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
Dreadful to see Banksy’s modern classic girl with the red balloon re-treaded time and again. Conversely, he’s created an ample street meme that is ripe for re-interpreting.
A traditionally red sky lantern (or Kǒngmíng lantern or Chinese lantern) stands in for the balloon here – a symbol of good fortune and happiness. You will see these fire-powered lanterns floating into the air above night time crowds at festivals far and wide – including in China, India, Brazil, Thailand, Taiwan, and Japan.Ignorance among some in the US, and particularly in New York, has lead to an anti-Asian sentiment and to hate crimes being committed this year – because of people’s mental associations with China and the Covid-19 epidemic.
During a time of increased fear and lowered economic prospects it is not unusual for xenophobia to rise. Even so, we all expect better of each other. We’re pretty confident that Banksy would not mind his original piece to be repurposed to #StopAsianHate.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
A photograph recalling the idyllic calm of the Hudson River School of painting perhaps, this paradisal view takes place where the Hudson meets the ocean: Brooklyn.
It was springtime in our fair borough this year, and from this site within the damply verdant Botanical Gardens, one could still hear a distant murmur from the car traffic not far – but instead we reclined into the flora and fauna.
An instant classic for us, this photo anticipates the burst of color and violin strings and robins eggs and resplendent maidens with dew-touched skin who would soon be strolling on the arm of their beloved, pleased to catch their own reflections in the pond. From this perch on the restless overgrown shore, we knew at once that this would be, at the least, another unusual year, beneath troubled heavens on high.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
New York Street Artist Winston Tseng cleverly pokes his finger in your eye during these days when more tepid artists stick to cute and cuddly. He has been expanding the vocabulary of the street to slickly lampoon systemic hypocrisies; employing the visual language of corporate advertising, illuminating the now common practice of manipulating populations, not just consumers.
With a brightly flat illustration style similar to friendly public service announcements, Tseng’s subtle sarcasm has the power to trigger personal threats and paranoid claims from aggrieved passersby on the street and various knee-jerk commenters on social media during this polarized period in the U.S.
In a typical poster by the street artist we see a semi-official looking public-service ad. It proposes a private, charity-funded solution to a social responsibility that once was paid by taxes – children’s education.
Now Bob and Barbie from right wing media opine that teachers are blood-suckers and public education is akin to a socialist plot. Meanwhile last years CARES Act fund went to the “wealthiest corporations and individuals”.
It’s so much worse than we ever imagined it would get.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
On this shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, you face east across the Williamsburg Bridge from Brooklyn into Manhattan; a murky miasma of wet flurries and winter fog filling the air, blocking your clear view, engulfing the island.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
Don’t know why, there’s no sun up in the sky. Stormy weather…
There have been many storms these last few years, and sadly it looks like there are a couple on the horizon. At its most turbulent, we wish you health and, at least, a portion of periodic happiness.
As neighbors and as a community, let’s remember and remind each other “Storms don’t last forever”. We can ride them out together!
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
From winter earlier this year, a simple scene of sublime storm sculpture; the contrast of the compact yellow car enclosed with the curvilinear snow-white powder whipped by a blizzard, immobilizing the city for a day.
While trudging through the snow-filled streets in thickly treaded boots, suddenly your mind turns to summer! The frothy yellow and white reminds you of The Lemon Ice King of Corona, Queens during the hot and humid days of July. Mmmmmmnnn.. lemon ice. Alternately, thoughts may turn to white sugar icing on top of Italian Lemon Drop cookies at any number of bakeries, one which may only be a few blocks away. Oh, New York, how we love you to the moon and back.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
It’s the elephant in the room at every social gathering, turning each store, restaurant, studio, living room, museum, pool hall… into a mental jail of some sort. Will this be the holiday office dinner that kills me? Will this be the graffiti jam that jams my lungs? Will this be the Christmas cashier who makes me finally cash out?
Probably that is why this diminutive statue in prison garb waving the white face mask flag high above the sidewalk, over our heads, ever-present, unmoving, – captures a moment that we are living in, courtesy of artist Styro in Berlin.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
Your human rights are inalienable. You are born with them, and no one can “take them away”.
Unfortunately, there always seem to be insidious new laws and new lawlessness to prevent people from exercising their rights fully.
We like this piece from Colombia’s Toxicomano on a New York street in 2021 because it has a certain “retro” style, dating back to the 2000s Street Art vernacular with its “photocopy” filtering – as well as the 70s/80s punk pioneers and the hand-made zine culture of that time.
We also think it is incredibly on-point today when rights are being eroded wherever you look, and knowing your rights is the first step to retaining them.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
Aside from being a well-played piece on the Lower East Side this year, we admire how graffiti writer False’s graphic presentation contributes to the word salad of the street.
The brain tries to make a sentence out of this, or rather, a poem.
Essex Street Market False Acne New Roma Pizza Hot & Cold Sandwiches Gyros Hot Coffee Italian Food Free Delivery Stay Busy!
Words of wisdom that make about as much sense as the debates and speeches this year by so-called leaders and talking heads. So much scatting, free-associating, so much stream-of-consciousness collectibles from your road trip through this life. It’s all music. It’s all dance. It’s all up to you.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
One misconception about living in the city is that you can’t really appreciate nature among the harried cacophony of honking cars, screeching trains, bullets flying, and teens screaming at Tik Tok videos. OMG, same!
But in fact, the act of tracking down graffiti and street art requires you to prepare for hours of weatherly indignities… and thrilling moments of natural wonder. Like these geese convening in the snow, goose-stepping around, for a few stolen moments anyway.
“The geese flew on, I have never seen them again. Maybe I will, someday, somewhere. Maybe I won’t. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that, when I saw them, I saw them as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.”
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
