Seattle Graffiti 101

The UW's newly online Urban Archives doesn't seem to have a whole lot of images in it (and a lot of what they do have is crap) and a larger and more thorough collection of Seattle graffiti images can be found at flickr or PNG, but we think they're definitely on the right track. Their interface allows you to search by keyword or browse by a couple of different categories they've set up: political graffiti, stickers, stencils, glass graffiti, hand styles, and wall graffiti. We'd love to see the university grow a proper collection someday and hopefully the piece in the P-I this morning will inspire some more young urban archeologists to fire up their cameras.

While other areas of urban life have been well-documented -- architecture, for example -- this is one segment that hasn't been explored in Seattle, the young archivists say. But it's more than gritty photos. They hope their work can be used by researchers, urban planners, architects and others who study how people interact with their surroundings.
"I like the idea of preserving images ... for people to look at," said UW senior Emily Fischer, whose photographs appear in the collection.

"Oftentimes, graffiti gets buffed so fast that no one gets to take a picture of it, so it's cool that we get to be able to record some of that communication that's going on," she said.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@seattlest.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Dan in Arts & Events, News on December 8, 2005 10:46 AM

Comments [rss]

patriot

Does anyone remember Mr. Nose from the 80's in the University District?

brown

I'm looking for someone to come freestyle a wall in my room. If anyone knows anyone that would be willing to do that let me know. My emails z.a.brown@comcast.net. I live in seattle and I'll pay for the art thats done. Thanks

skeeza

and I like how you name your site, thecityslums.com. Like Seattle has slums. You ever been to NY, fool? I doubt it. What, you got a can in one hand and your Starbucks latte in the other?

irina

just to clarify, we're not trying to compete with graffiti sites that exist. i like thecityslums.com a lot, but we are not trying to create another gallery of graffiti and we don't pretend to be "writers."

we're interested in what people write/draw/post in the streets be it "real" graffiti, "fake" chalk on the ground or scribble on a wall.

We're recording these public conversations and their many forms. We are also recording the context of where they are found and, as Tom said, we are creating a searchable database.

in addition to graffiti, we have yard art, ghost signs and in a few months we should have many more new urban texts, including more political graffiti from other countries.

also, not sure what you refer to when you write, "dry snitching of peeps identities." that was not intended and we'd be happy to correct any mistakes.

yall dont write

No disrespect..but you must not write. because this is only slightly better thatn the other shit sites Ive seen. If you want to see an actual real graffiti site with writers from seattle and the rest of the northwest go to "thecityslums.com" no fake ass "political" chalk ground tags there. no misuse of writers lingo. no dry snitching of peeps identities(even if he is a toy)and you jock cold K?he did rep it tough I guess. But who cares. he was wack! a total toy. just like c2d and jtc crew fo realz'

tom

Hey Dan,

Thanks for the plug! All of this media attention sort of caught us by surprise. We've only just started the Digital Collections part of the project; this is our first uploaded batch of images. We are currently tagging (no pun intended) a lot of images with metadata so that all of this can be emminently searchable. For that reason, this takes time -- and we're busy busy grad students. As you say, lots of other sites have way more images than we do (for the moment) but I think our collaboration with UW Libraries will make our site the best for organizing and searching the data. Feel free to contact us or visit our website: http://www.urbanarchives.org Likewise, we'll keep you posted with new developments!

As for Cold K, I personally like some of his later work when he got more stylistic. I have some images of his stuff that I took and that is more artistic. It'll make it to the database eventually.

Cheers,

/tom

Dan

great start irina. I'd love to talk more about this project on the site so feel free to email me with news about it.

irina

hey, we're working on making it more interesting. this is just the beginning!

Matt Silvie

bookmark the flog if you have not already done so

http://www.fantagraphics.com/blog/archive/2005_12_01_fantagraphics_archive.html#113406546745822024

Dan

ha, you mention one of my favs. They actually have very little cold killer stuff: only these two as far as I saw, and they're both of a garage under the viaduct. I think flickr has more coldk than this db has in their entire cataloge.