Tagging at a freeway offramp, snapped through a car window
On my way to the garden nursery, I spotted this seemingly random, messy stylized group of letters. What was the artist trying to say? I wondered, so I took a quick, online course in Graffiti Comprehension.
A tag is someone’s assumed identity, the coded name. Tagging is the writing of that assumed identity. Every graffiti artist starts his or her career with getting a tag name and then learning to develop a tag style to go with the name. This name is chosen either by the writer or it is an extension of a mentor’s name. It is this name, which is the core of graffiti, and the tag is the quickest and simplest representation of this coded identity. The tag is the subject matter, the structure of the art that is graffiti art. The work of the graffiti artist revolves around the development of the name. A tag is the one colour signature of the graffiti artist and their identity. –Excerpted from “How To Read Graffiti,” by Jason Dax Woodward
Day 17 of the #AugustBreak2015 Photography Challenge. The prompt for today is reading.
Artist taggers must make a lot of money. I see the works of what seems like the same tagger all over the world. It’s hard to get somewhere before he/she does 🙂
They’re ubiquitous, for sure, but each tagger has a stylized signature that’s unique to him or her. I wonder if we can train ourselves to notice the trends, similarities and variances among them. That’d be cool–rather like distinguishing Monet from his contemporaries, if you grant these “artists” enough sway.
This post reminded me of one I wrote about graffiti:http://carolbaldwinblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/when-writing-is-on-wall.html and
http://carolbaldwinblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/teachable-moments.html
You’ll appreciate them!
An excellent read, Carol! Love your graffiti snaps (infinite styles & colors, aren’t there?), and YES, graffiti is a nuanced art form. It has its place…and places where it’s less welcome.