Urban surfaces have, for some time now, exerted an irresistible pull on the errant can of spray paint, much as street trees and fire hydrants attract the strolling dog. The spraying tends to serve the same purpose in either case: to broadcast a territorial claim to the other sprayers on the block. Occasionally, a piece of graffiti transcends this game of claim and counter-claim and touches the passerby who neither knows the rules of the game nor has any stake in it. The best of these pieces are works of art. They come to inhabit and, thereby, transform and enliven their settings. Their faces become focal points of the landscape, familiar strangers that one day will be missed.
I first looked seriously at graffiti in Berlin in 2002. The present series was done in the spring of 2004 in the alleyways of Montréal.