Like Arte Callejero. Here you can find loads of graffiti from the streets of cities around Latin America and other parts of the world. At the bottom of the page you’ve got an itemized list of cities, artists and graffiti styles, which assembles an instant collection from the website in one click.
Having lived briefly in a city known for its quality spraypaint, I clicked on Oaxaca to see what was there. I was surprised to see that many of the pieces I’d taken pictures of myself were also there on the website, like this one.
This one is my rendering of the same stuff you can find on theirs. Don’t want to step on any digital toes.
On the left side of the page, you get links to other websites dedicated to street art. And if you follow the blog regularly, you get a new update just about every day.
Usually they put up images, but occasionally they share a video, like this one.
BIG BANG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
This video is all over the internet. And now, it’s here, too.
The Italian artist who created it worked on it for a year or more, and at least part of it was filmed in Montevideo and Buenos Aires during a South American tour which lasted several months. Definitely take the time to let it load and watch the whole thing. From my perspective, it’s the little details which make it superb. The audio, the flashes of pedestrians, the interaction with the urban landscape. All of that led me to watch it a couple of times already.
The internet, almost completely unfettered by the borders that confine us geographically, can provide endless glimpses into foreign culture. More than ever, people can experience international culture in ways limited only by their tenacity in seeking it out. Type any concept in the world into a search engine, and chances are, somebody has already put it online. Sometimes you just get a few lines of text and some lousy pictures, and other times you find a site well geared to showcase the material it’s there to represent. Now that you know they’re out there, maybe you’ll find some time to play around on Arte Callejero and Blu‘s website as well.
Brian Horstman is a teacher of English as well as a traveler, writer, photographer and cyclist. His interest in traveling around Latin America began while he was living in New Mexico, where he began to experience the Latino culture that lives on there. From there he spent time in Oaxaca, Mexico and has since been living in Cuenca, Ecuador and will be living in Chile starting in 2011. Cal’s Travels chronicles some of his more memorable experiences from Mexico and Ecuador, as well as some side trips to other parts.