Etikett: Foto

This photo gallery from the streets of Riga is the first instalment in a series of four focusing on street art and wall scribblings around the world; the next three will be Rome, Berlin and Athens. As part of this project, we are embracing the vibrant energy of street art in general, and wall slogans as a way to amplify unheard voices. This concept is akin to what we call ’Written on the Wall’.

By Öyvind Vågen

READ MORE: PHOTO FEATURES FROM ESPINHO AND VENICE/OSLO/TRIESTE.

From the secret symbols of Christians in the Catacombs of Rome, through Mexican murals and the wall newspapers of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, to today’s mix of abandoned and provocative slogans and aphorisms, wall slogans have travelled back and forth from the voice of power to the megaphones of the poor. We explore this in a photo essay series that depicts and reflects on graffiti from around the world. This, too, is true to the magazine’s name and purpose: a kind of critical dialogue conducted through marginal notes, graffiti on the fringes of existence, if you will. When we started this cultural journal back in 2018, one of the core ideas was to revisit and highlight the concept of writing – or, as it more often is, scribbling – on the wall as a form of a layperson’s wall newspaper, but the idea really did not materialise, despite the occasional blog post, until now.