Bruce leaves me to return back to his castle. Clearly he's unwilling to sacrifice his pawns to take the king. Just as I expected. With that knowledge in hand I now have all I need for my final trial. This will all be over soon Bruce. The only question really is what pawns of your will I take tonight?

 

The handcuffs he placed on me aren't your standard make. They take a good few minutes to unlock and remove, by that time though I gain an audience. The sirens are an immediate give away as to who my visitors are. Looks as though Bruce called them to arrest me.

 

How foolish. You should know better Bruce.

 

"Bullock I've got a visual!"

 

"Hands where I can see them!"

 

Normally I wouldn't humour myself in such a way, after all a predator loses it's prey when it decides to play with it, but given how these are Bruce's allies I feel inclined to have some fun.

 

"I can't."

 

"Show them or we'll fire!"

 

"I can't. They've been handcuffed."

 

"Just like he said."

 

A quick inspection of the three officers reveal they're all heavily armed. A male and a female in uniform a chubby male. He's the same male who interrupted my one on one time with the commissioner. The specifications of their weapons is hard to identify but they're clearly automatic rifles. Clearly Bruce has made them aware of all that I'm capable of. It'll be nice to have them die at the hands of their own weapons.

 

"Batman called you?"

 

"Yeah. Not sure how he got my number."

 

"Well I suppose he has to make do whilst the commissioner is in hospital."

 

They all keep their guns trained on me.

 

"How is these days? Still one handed I hope."

 

"He's fine, and he can't wait to get his hands on you."

 

"Hand."

 

"Think you're funny tough guy?"

 

"I'm not the one with the gun."

 

"Ramsey get him on his feet."

 

The female officer walks towards me whilst the two males keep their weapons trained on me. I allow the officer to get close to me. It's when she's within thirty centimetres of my person that I strike.

 

Before she can react I jump up and grab the rifle from her hands pointing it at her associates. They quickly try to get a lock on me but I grab hold of officer Ramsey and use her as a shield. One thing you can always guarantee with law enforcement, they'll never shoot innocent people. Well....they won't if they're American law enforcement. I'd imagine it's from the threat of being sued or whatever.

 

"Drop the gun!"

 

"Let her go!"

 

"How about a compromise?"

 

I shoot the male officer in the uniform and fire a round in to the chubby detective's leg causing him to collapse on the ground.

 

"You monster!"

 

"Not the best thing to say when you're at someone's mercy."

 

She continues to struggle wanting to be free of my grip so I oblige her request. I push her away and unload the rest of the clip into her.

 

Is this the best your allies have to offer Bruce?

 

At least that ward of yours puts on a better show but these fools are just a disgrace to all you've built.

 

The chubby detective remains motionless, clearly hoping I will believe he's dead. Unfortunately, he's not so lucky. I grab hold of him and lift him up of the ground. Christ he's heavy.

 

"Don't worry detective. You'll be joining them shortly."

 

"Do your worst freak. I don't fear you."

 

"Do you fear Batman?"

 

"No. But you do."

 

"Oh?

 

"All of your kind fears him."

 

"All my kind? There are no men like me."

 

"There will always be people like you, and he'll come for you."

 

"That's what I'm hoping for. Anything you to confess to in your final moments?"

 

I carry him up to the altar and he looks up to see the moon shining through the skylight.

 

"Anything passing remarks?"

 

"Go to hell."

 

"I could do. But I'd prefer to make my own hell."

 

"Batman will stop yo...."

 

As he speaks his final sentence I quickly twist the head and break his neck killing him instantly. No. I don't think he will.

oldie in Boston!

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Chris Hatounian © 2014

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The Nature of Dreams

 

SIGMUD FREUD'S theory of dreams was part of his theory of man. He assumed that man in the course of his growth is forced to repress evil strivings - egocentricity, destructiveness, irrationality - in order to adapt himself to the requirements of social life. He does so, said Freud, partly by turning his asocial strivings into socially useful ones - a process which Freud interpreted as either "sublimation" or "reaction formation." Successful "sublimation" is exemplified by the surgeon who was turned his original sadistic strivings into a socially useful activity. An example of successful "reaction formation" is that of a humanitarian who has developed great kindness in combatting his destructive potentialities. The best in man, according to Freud, is rooted in his worst.

 

When we are asleep, Freud reasoned, we relax the effort that normally restraints the criminal we are at bottom. Our dream life is the refuge, as it were, where we recover from the heavy burden of our culture and are free to satisfy repressed infantile strivings. Yet even in sleep the internal censor's attention is only relaxed, not entirely dismissed. To deceive him, we dream in a kind of secret code. The real meaning of the dream can be understood only if the code is deciphered. This process of deciphering is what Freud called the interpretation of dreams.

 

Freud's theory of dream shocked psychologists and was denounced by many as unscientific. Most of his followers have denied it fanatically, though some accepting its heavy content of truth, came to consider it one-sided. Carl Custav Jung, who became the leader of his group, tended increasingly emphasize the 'higher' aspects of dreams just as one-sidedly as Freud has emphasized the 'lower'. Where Freud has found in dreams only irrational infantile strivings, Jung saw only expressions of moral or religious experiences, which he interpreted as outgrowth of racially inherited religious and metaphysical ideas.

 

If a man saw his dream a woman whose features were unknown to him, Freud would assume that this woman represented his mother, that the infantile sexual attachment to the mother, repressed in the conscious state, was satisfied in his dream. Freud argued that the dream she remained unknown to the dreamer in order to fool the censor. Relating this longing for the mother to the recent experiences of the dreamer, the analyst sought the hidden incestuous aspects in the dreamer's relationship to a woman which whom he may recently have fallen in love. Jung, on the other hand, tended to interpret the unknown woman as the image of the "unconscious", and also as a symbol of feminine aspects in the male dreamer's personality.

 

Had Jung been less concerned with the creating another school, and less fascinated by irrational racialism, his departure from Freud's dogmatism could have avoided the blind alley into which it ultimately led. As matters stand, a constructive revision of Freud's theory of dreams must pick up the thread where it was left before Jung's and other schools of psychoanalysis were formed.

 

WE MAY begin with Aristotle's definition of dreams, quoted but not accepted by Freud: Dreams are expressions of any kind of mental activity under the condition of sleep. The distinctive quality of dreams, the, is not a particular area of experience - neither Freud's "infantile wishes" nor Jung's "true picture of the subjective state" -but the effect of the condition of sleep upon our mode of experiencing.

 

Physiologically, sleep is a condition of chemical regeneration of the organism. Energy is restored while physical activity and even sensory perception are almost entirely discontinued. Sleep suspends the main function of waking life: reacting to reality by perception and action. This difference between the biological functions of waking and of sleeping is, in fact, a difference between two states of experience. In the waking state, thoughts or feelings responds primarily to challenge - the challenge of mastering our environment, changing it, defending ourselves against it. The primary task of waking man is survival; this means essentially, that he must think in terms of time and space, and that his thoughts are subject to the logical laws which are necessary for action.

 

During sleep the frame of reference changes radically. While we sleep we are not concerned with bending the outside world to our purposes. We are helpless - but we are also free. We are free from the burden of work, from the task of attack or defense, from the watching and mastering reality. We live in an inner world concerned exclusively with ourselves.

 

In sleep the realm of necessity has given way to the realm of freedom where "I" am the only system to which thoughts and feelings refer. In a dream the grief I experienced 10 years ago may be just as strong now, and I may hate a person on the other side of the globe as intensely as if he stood beside me. Sleep experience need not pay attention to qualities that are important in coping with reality. If I feel, for instance, that a person is a coward, I may dream that he has changed into a chicken. This change is illogical in terms of my orientation to outside reality, but logical in terms of what I feel about the person. Sleep experience, therefore, is not lacking in logic, but it is subject to a special logic of its own, which is entirely valid in that particular experiential state.

 

The "unconscious" is unconscious only in relation to the "normal" state of activity. When we call it "unconscious", we really say only that it is an experience alien to the frame of mind which exists while we act; it is then felt as a ghost-like, intrusive element, hard to get hold of and to remember. But the day world is an unconscious in our sleep experience as the night world is in our waking experience.

 

From what has been said so far it follows that the concepts "conscious" and "unconscious" are to be understood relative to the sleeping and waking states respectively. As and old Chinese poet put it: "I dreamed that I am a butterfly; now I do not know, am I a man who dreamed he was a butterfly or am I a butterfly who dreams it is a man." In the waking state of action those experiences which feel real in the dream are "unconscious." But when we are asleep and no longer preoccupied with action but with self-experience, the waking-experience is "unconscious" and sometimes it is a hard struggle to chase away the sleep world and to convince oneself of the reality of the waking world.

 

It is true that even in the waking state of existence, thinking and feeling are not entirely subject to the limitations of time and space. Our creative imagination permits us to think about past and future objects as if they were present, and of distant objects as if they were before our eyes. It could therefore be argued that the absence of the space-time system is not characteristic of sleep existence in contradiction to waking existence, but of thinking and feeling in contradiction to acting. Here it becomes necessarily to clarify an essential point.

 

We must distinguish between the contents of thought process and the logical categories employed in thinking. While it is true that the contents of our waking thoughts are not subject to limitations of space and time, the logical categories of thinking are those of the space-time logic. I can, for instance, think of my father, and state that his attitude in a certain situation is identical with mine; this statement is logically correct. If I state, on the other hand, "I am my father," the statement is "illogical" because it is not conceived in reference to the physical world. The sentence is logical, however, in a purely experiential realm: it expresses the experience of intense closeness to my father. When I have a feeling in the waking state with regard to a person whom I have not seen for 20 years, I remain aware of the fact that the person is not present. But if I dream about the person, my feelings deals with the person "as if he or she were present" is to express the feeling in logical waking-life concepts. In sleep existence there is no "as if"; the person is present. (It is true, however, that sleep is not completely free from action concepts, as proved by the fact that sometime we think in our dream that what we dream cannot really be so.)

 

The experiential mode of thought occurs in other forms of dissociation besides dreams - in the hypnotic trance, in psychoses, in early infantile experience, and possibly in primitive thinking. And there is, of course, the state of intense mystical contemplation, wherein attention is withdrawn completely from the outside world as a potential field of action, and is completely focused on self-experience although the person remains awake. The mystic, indeed, considers this state to be highest awareness. The language employed in such a state of contemplation follows the experiential logic of dream, not the action logic of "normal" thinking.

 

So the sleep existence, it seems, is only the extreme case of a purely contemplative experience, which can also be established by a waking person if he focuses on his inner experience. Symbolic language employing experimental logic is one mode of human expression - just as valid and rational as our "normal" logic, and different from it only as to the systems of reference. These systems, in turn, are determined by the total orientation of the culture. Cultures, in which the emphasis is on self-experience, such as those of the East, or some "primitive" cultures where mastery of nature is little developed, give great scope to this symbolic language. In modern Western culture, almost exclusively focused on activity in the sense of mastery over nature, the comprehension of symbolic language has atrophied. Dreams are remnants of a legitimate mode of human expression, one well known, now looked up as if they were undecipherable hieroglyphs.

 

IT is peculiarity of dreams that inner experiences are expressed as if they were sensory experiences, subjective states as if they were actions dealing with the external reality. This interchange between the two modes of experience is the very essence of symbols, and particularly of the dream symbol. While the body is inactive and the senses shut down, the inner experience makes use of the dormant faculties of sensory reaction.

 

A forceful illustration of the dream's symbolic language is the story of Jonah. God commanded the prophet to help the people of Nineveh to repent of their sin and so to save them. But Jonah is a man of stern justice rather than of mercy; he declines to feel responsible for sinners and attempts to escape from his mission. he boards a ship. A storm comes up. Jonah goes into hold of the ship and falls into a deep sleep. The sailors believe that God sent the storm because of jonah and throw him into sea. He is swallowed by a whale and stays inside the animal for several days.

 

The central theme of this symbolic, dreamlike story is Jonah's desire for complete seclusion and irresponsibility - a position which at first was meant to save him for mission, but eventually is turned into a unbearable, prisonlike existence. The ship, the sleep, the ocean, the whale's belly - all are different symbols of that state of existence. They follow each other in time and space, but they stand for growing intensity of a feeling - the feeling of seclusion and protection. Being inside the whale has brought this experience to such a final intensity that Jonah cannot stand it any longer; he turns to God again; he desires to be freed, to go on with his mission.

 

SO far we have been concerned with the mode of expression and the particular logic of dreams resulting from the peculiar condition of sleep. We must now turn to the question in what respect the state of sleep also determines the content of dreams. According to Freud it does so in a specific way. Culture, in his view, suppresses our primitive-bad-instincts and the sublimation and reaction formation springing from this suppression are very essence of civilized life. Quite logically, then, in his view, dreams must bring out our worst, since in our sleep we are free - from the cultural pressure.

 

There can be no doubt that many dreams express the fulfillment of irrational, asocial and immoral wishes which we repress successfully during the waking state. When we are asleep and incapable of action it becomes safe to indulge in hallucinatory satisfaction of our lowest impulses. But the influence of culture is by no means as one-sidedly beneficial as Freud assumed. We are often more intelligent, wiser and more moral in our sleep than in waking life. The reason for this is the ambiguous character of our social reality. In mastering this reality we develop our faculties of observation, intelligence and reason; but we are also stultified by incessant propaganda, threats, ideologies and cultural "noise" that paralyze some of our most precious intellectual and moral functions. In fact, so much of what we think and feel is in response to these hypnotic influences that one may well wonder to what extent our waking experience is "ours." In sleep, no longer exposed to the noise culture, we become awake to what we really feel and think. The genuine self can talk; it is often more intelligent and more decent than the pseudo self which seems to be "we" when we are awake.

 

My conclusion, then, is that we may expect to find true insights and important value judgments expressed in our dreams, as well as immoral, irrational wishes. We may even find in them reliable predictions based on a correct appreciation of the intensity and the direction of forces operating in ourselves and in others. Both Freud's emphasis on the "low" and Jung's emphasis on the "high" aspect of dream content are dogmatic restrictions. Only if it is recognized that dreams can express either side of a dreamers nature is the way cleared for a real understanding to them.

 

The following examples illustrate the alternative interpretations that can be given to the same dream. The dreamer sees himself naked in the presence of strangers and feels ashamed but powerless to alter the painful situation. Freud said that this dream represented an infantile exhibitionistic impulse still alive in the adult. During sleep this impulse comes to the fore and finds its fulfillment in the dream; the dreamer's mature personality, not entirely silenced, reacts with shame and fear to the very wishes of his infantile self.

 

No doubts many nakedness dreams are to be so understood. But others must be interpreted differently. Nakedness is not necessarily an expression of sexual exhibitionism; it can also symbolize the true self of a person, free from pretense and make-believe. A person who dreams of himself as being naked in a well-dressed group may give symbolic expression to his wish to be honest, to be more himself, not to be conformist who wants to please everybody. And his embarrassment in the dream is the same embarrassment he would feel in waking, too, whenever he tried to discard his dependence on other people's opinion.

 

According to the orthodox Freudian interpretation, the nakedness dream's essential impulse is an infantile sexual desire; in the alternative, it is a rational wish, rooted in the most mature part of the dreamer's personality. But if so, why should it be distinguished in dream symbolism? Why should we repress some of our very best impulses? The answer is that in our culture people are no less ashamed of their best strivings than of their worst. Generosity is suspected as "foolish", honesty as "naive", integrity as "not practical." While one tendency within our complex culture presents these qualities as virtues, another stigmatizes them as "idealistic dreams." Consequently wishes motivated by such virtues often live and underground existence together with wishes rooted in our vices. To mistake rational wishes of the dreamer for expressions of irrational strivings makes it impossible for him to recognize positive goals which he has set himself. Yet to see in every dream an ideal or profound religious symbol is just as fallacious. Whether a dream is to be understood as an expression of the rational or the irrational side in ourselves can be determined only by a full investigation of the individual case - by knowing the dreamer's character, his associations with the dream elements, the problems he was concerned with before he fell asleep.

 

The following dream is an example of unconscious insight and moral judgment: A man has visited X, a widely known figure whose kindness and wisdom are praised by everybody. He was properly impressed by the admirable man. The same night he dreams of X, who now has a cruel face and tries to swindle a poor old woman out of her last dollar. He remembers this dream the next day, is quite surprised and wonders why the dream picture of X differs so completely from the "real" picture of the day before. Suddenly he is struck by the recollection that his instinctive reaction to X had been one of intense antipathy - but so fleeting had this first reaction been that he was not aware of it at the time of the visit. Actually his antipathy was his real insight into X's character. it was silenced at once by the conventional picture of X: the "noise" had drowned the dreamer's real judgment, which awoke when he was asleep.

 

If this dream were understood in Freud's terms, the subject would accuse himself of unconscious hostility and, having discovered his own wickedness, would be all the more prone to accept the conventional picture of X. If, on the other hand, the interpreter assumed that dreams unerringly express the "real" judgment, the dreamer might accept his dream as evidence against X, and act accordingly, though it may indeed have expressed only the dreamer's own hostility. Which interpretation is correct can be found only in an appraisal of the dreamer's total situation.

 

One of the best known dreams of prediction is Joseph's dream, reported in the Bible. He dreamed that the sun, moon and stars were making obeisance to him. His brothers, hearing of the dream, did not need the help of an expert to understand that the dream expressed a feeling of superiority over his parents and brothers. It certainly can be argued that the infantile rivalry with father and brothers was the root of the dream (which would be Freud's interpretation). But what Joseph saw in the dream later came true; the dream indeed predicted future events. And Joseph was able to make such a prediction because he sensed his exceptional gifts, which made him actually superior to the other members of his family; but the conceited character of such insight made it impossible for him to be aware of his superiority - except under the condition of sleep.

 

WHEN we dream we speak a language which is also employed in some of the most significant documents of culture: in myths, in fairy tales and art, recently in novels like Franz Kafka's. This language is the only universal language common to all races and all times. It is the same language in the oldest myths as in the dreams every one of us has today. Moreover, it is a language which often expresses inner experiences, wishes, fears, judgments and insights which much greater precision and fullness than our ordinary language is capable of. Yet symbolic language is a forgotten language, considered by most as non-sensical or unimportant. This ignorance not only prevents us from understanding the wisdom expressed in myths but also from being in touch with a significant part of ourselves. "Dreams which are not understood are like letters which are not opened," says the Talmud, and this statement is undeniably true.

 

Why, then, do we not teach the understanding of this forgotten language as a subject in the curriculum of higher education?

 

True, there are dreams so difficult and complicated that it requires a psychologist of great knowledge and technical skill to understand them; and sometimes even the expert will fail. But is this so different from the study of languages, of mathematics, of physics? Liberal education, in genera, only lays the foundation for more specialized skills which the student later develops for himself. The analogy between teaching dream interpretation and teaching languages is particularly close, not only because dream language is a sort of "foreign" language but also because the results of teaching are similar. No student succeeds in mastering a foreign language without specialized study; but even an average undergraduate is capable of understanding syntax and grammar.

 

For a number of years I have been teaching dream interpretation not only to graduate students of psychoanalysis but also to undergraduates at Bennington College. The results, at least to my satisfaction, compare with the results of teaching any other subject matter to the same group of students. Remarkable achievements have been rare in this as in any other field; the minimum achievements have not been lower. The aim is to help the student to understand an unknown language in which he expresses important aspects of his own personality, and also to understand a mode of expression in which mankind has expressed some of its most significant ideas.

 

source

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The Nature of Dreams - Erich Fromm

  

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Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).

 

Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions

 

"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".

 

The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.

 

The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.

 

Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.

 

Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:

 

Wet with cool dew drops

fragrant with perfume from the flowers

came the gentle breeze

jasmine and water lily

dance in the spring sunshine

side-long glances

of the golden-hued ladies

stab into my thoughts

heaven itself cannot take my mind

as it has been captivated by one lass

among the five hundred I have seen here.

 

Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.

 

Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.

 

There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.

 

Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.

 

The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.

 

In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:

 

During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".

 

Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.

 

While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’

 

Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.

 

An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.

 

Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983

 

Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture

Main article: Commercial graffiti

With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.

 

In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".

 

Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.

 

Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.

 

Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.

 

Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.

 

There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.

 

The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.

 

Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.

 

Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis

 

Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.

 

Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.

 

Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"

 

Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal

 

In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.

 

Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.

 

Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.

 

Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.

 

With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.

 

Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.

 

Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.

 

Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.

 

Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.

 

Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.

 

Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.

 

Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.

 

The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.

 

I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.

 

The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.

 

Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.

 

Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.

 

In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".

 

There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.

 

Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.

 

A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.

By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.

 

Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.

 

In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.

 

A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.

 

From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

 

In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.

 

Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.

 

Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.

 

Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.

  

In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.

 

Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.

 

In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.

 

In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."

 

In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.

 

In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.

 

In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.

 

In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.

 

In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.

 

The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.

 

To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."

 

In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.

 

In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.

 

Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".

 

Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)

In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.

 

Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.

 

Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.

 

In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.

 

Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.

 

Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.

 

To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.

 

When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.

US Independence Day 2018

Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 20th Street

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Great Egret, Airborne. Central Valley, California. January 16, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell - all rights reserved.

 

A great egret flies past, skimming above wetland plants

 

In some ways these magnificent birds are very accessible, but in other they can be hard to photograph in interesting ways. They are common at the locations where I frequently photograph birds, and when I have decent cover (shooting from a vehicle or similar) I can frequently get relatively close to them without scaring them into flight. The key is a very slow and cautious approach and sensitivity to the body language of the bird — there are often hints when egrets think that I am getting too close. From just outside that boundary the egrets are large enough to fill the frame in good conditions, and I have lots of photographs of them on the ground feeding. Perhaps too many!

 

That's the problem. An egret on the ground is interesting, but not often quite as interesting as an egret in the air. (Grounded egrets can be beautiful in the right light and with the right background and so forth.) In flight they are beautiful birds, typically using slow wing motion and often gliding, and they assume impressive poses when taking off and when landing. However, the lift off is sudden and the flight path typically takes the bird away from me. But sometimes I get lucky, as I did with this specimen. I was actually unaware of its presence and, in fact, it may have been unaware of mine. I had stopped to photograph something else when the bird suddenly flew into range from my left and passed in front of me as it made a gentle turn around my position. I've learned to react fairly quickly and to get the camera up and tracking, but in the best of circumstances it is still a challenge. The first couple of frames are almost humorously off-target, but then I found my subject and centered it in the frame as it passed by very closely.

  

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, "California's Fall Color: A Photographer's Guide to Autumn in the Sierra" is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Reacting to the alarm call of a nearby Lapwing.

Ninth reaction

Del Norte County, California, 2007

 

Balda Super Baldax, 80mm f3.5 Baldanar, Fuji Velvia 100 processed C41

Jurassic Forest, Alberta, Canada (2019)

12 by 12 - Challenge #2 Find a place where you live where history made its mark. Allow yourself to breathe, feel, contemplate and react with a photograph – Laura El-Tantawy

 

My steps soon washed away

As those who trod before

The oceans holding memories

To be washed to another shore

its react from jobk

here you guys go....easier on the eyes

So I finally had time to do some artwork to fit chapter zero of my DC series. I’m not going to say too much. So please, enjoy 😊

  

Chapter Zero

 

“You weren’t lying, Mr. Wayne,” a slurred woman’s voice said. “You really are amazing in bed.”

Bruce felt fingers trace up his bare chest and it sent warm shivers racing up his spine. But not the kind of warm shivers he was expecting.

He was expecting his body to react in a sexual way when he felt her touch. He was expecting his lips to press passionately against hers; he was expecting to pull her close so he could feel the warmth of her skin; he was expecting his body to make love to hers like he had just done moments before.

But Bruce didn’t feel any of that. He only felt disgust. Bitter disgust toward himself and the woman lying beside him.

Bruce looked at her, watching her gaze at his exposed body. She bit her lip, probably thinking about many more things she wanted him to do to her. But also thinking about the many things she would like to do to him. Either way the only thing racing through her mind was sex.

But then again, wasn’t that the only thing racing through his mind when he first saw her? Wasn’t that the only thing he was thinking when she kept watching him with her bright green eyes? Wasn’t that all he wanted when then were in his back seat?

Yes. That was all he wanted. He didn’t want the woman. He just wanted the sex. And lucky for him, there are many women in Gotham City who would do anything to share his bed for one night.

Bruce moaned as her fingers traced down his ribs. Why was he even moaning? He wasn’t interested in this woman anymore. Not that he ever was.

“Something wrong, Bruce?” The woman asked.

“No. I just need a minute,” he responded.

The woman smiled and rolled over. “Let me know when you’re ready for more.”

Bruce felt his stomach turn.

Why was she even here? Why did he invite her? They didn’t love each other, that was obvious. They didn’t even really like each other. Honestly all they wanted was a night of pleasure. Didn’t matter who it was with, as long as they got that out of their heads so they could move on with their lives.

Bruce looked over at the woman who was snoring softly beside him. She was a slender woman with pale blonde hair that fell over cream colored skin; her lipstick was a bright cherry red shade that was mostly eaten off; she had a small nose and those green eyes that drew him in.

A truly stunning woman.

But also a heartless snake.

Bruce sighed and pulled the covers over the woman’s naked body. She nauseated him being here, and the feeling struck him as inappropriate. He didn’t understand why he felt that way, but whenever he thought about touching her again, his stomach turned.

Why did he do this to himself? Why couldn’t he be like those other 26 year old rich men that were already married to an amazing woman, had children who looked up to him as if he were the moon and stars and came home to a happy home every night?

He played it cool in front of his business partners and staff, but truthfully he craved that. He didn’t like the playboy inside him that was always looking for a good time, but ran away from anything that even hinted at a serious relationship.

He wanted something new in his life. Something real. Something worth living for. But he knew better than anyone that that was a ridiculous dream that he couldn’t have. He knew that until he fought his biggest enemy, he wasn’t going to be able to be truly happy.

But how do you fight an enemy that knows your every move? How do you fight an enemy that always has a hand on your heart? How do you fight an enemy that is slowly consuming you?

Answer: You can’t.

You can’t fight. You can only run and hope that it will leave you for one more night. You can only hold your breath and pray that for one more night, its claws don’t dig deeper into your soul.

All you can do is hope that one day you will find the strength to cut that enemy off like a leach, once and for all.

A cool breeze drifted through the bedroom and Bruce shuddered. He hadn’t realized that he left the window. Odd. It being October in Gotham City, it would have been too cold to leave the window open.

Bruce sighed and pulled the covers off him. Instantly he felt a shivering wave wash over him, like someone had taken a bucket of icy water and dumped it over his head.

He shuddered and fought the desire to just stay in bed and leave the window alone. His mind went back to a few hours ago. He didn’t remember that window being open when he got here, and he didn’t think Alfred would have opened it.

Bruce shrugged and stood, letting his body shiver as he made his way to the window. He peered through the glass and watched his city come to life. The tall buildings glistened from the earlier rain. Street lamps splashed their golden hues onto gray sidewalks and lit the way for those who were going home. The trees swayed in the cold breeze, naked now, and clawed at the darkness.

Bruce reached to close the window, but stopped. He suddenly felt a sick feeling in his stomach. At first he thought he was going to throw up from all the wine he had earlier, but that wasn't it. He couldn’t place it, but something didn’t feel right.

He ignored the feeling and closed the window. His mind was just fuzzy from all the wine. Nothing more.

Bruce Wayen got back into bed, pulled the sleeping woman close to his chest, and let sleep finally take over his mind.

“Metropolis’ finest.” Volcana clicks her tongue in disappointment. Surrounded by the burnt rubble of several squad cars, She sprays out a torrent of fire from her hands, it almost hits a nearby cop, but I zip by to catch the lone officer from getting hit. I rush back to face her.

 

“And here I’d thought you’d be on the other side of the country.” She comments with a displeased sigh.

 

“Like I’d leave my city behind.”

 

“Ugh, cut the shit, your city? A bit selfish if you ask me.” She scoffs.

 

“So anyway, are you gonna back off or do we have to do this the hard way?”

 

“Claire, listen, I don’t want to have to fight you. But I can’t let you hurt anyone else.”

 

“Fine, your funeral.” She shrugs before letting out streams of fire at me, it throws me off from her as the force shoves me at a building. I could barely react as she finishes it off with a blast, propelling me onto the roof of another building. As she gets close, I grab her by the forearms and toss her across the roof, it barely fazes her as she lands on her feet.

 

“Didn’t expect it to be that easy did you? Especially after last time.” She asks as she uses both hands to shoot another combined line of fire in my direction, which I try to counter with my freeze breath. Her fire grows bigger in response, which pushes back my freeze breath; Fortunately, I’m not trying to stop her. She’s interrupted with a splash of ice that freezes her left side, she turns to see Tora.

 

“Hi! I’m Ice, nice to meet you!” she says as she throws more ice in her direction, Volcana dodges and counters as she melts the ice on her side.

 

“So you brought a friend to share your torment, fine by me!” as she’s about to let out more streaks of fire, Tora flings streams of ice at her, resulting in massive amounts of steam that nearly engulfs the rooftop. As soon as that happens, Volcana tosses darts of fire at Tora, she attempts to dodge while some graze her arms and legs. I race in front of her to block the rest with my body, I look back at her and she nods at me before running ahead, throwing several ice projectiles at Volcana, all of them melting without even getting near her and she finishes it off with a giant ice blast, which Volcana almost easily melts with her hands. I fly up to use my breath again to slow her which she tries blocking. Tora realizes my move and joins in, casting ice at Volcana. We both close in on her, slowy freezing her.

 

“What part of the name Volcana can’t you get through your thick skull?” She questions before slamming both her hands onto the ground, creating what almost seems like a wave of fire, the impact causes me to fly downwards over the roof and smack right into the street below, while Tora nearly falls off. As she attempts to get up, barely holding on.

 

“And you thought you had a chance, pity, I kind of liked your costume.” Volcana sniggers as she tries to let out a torrent at Tora. Which is blocked by a wall of fire, however this one was green.

 

“I would hope so, considering, y’know, I made it?” Beatriz interjects as she lands inbetween Volcana and Tora.

 

“Bea!”

 

“Bea you’re-” She stops herself, wincing in pain before noticing Bea staring at the burn marks on her body.

 

“I’m fine! I’m fine, you don’t need to-”

 

“I’ll deal with her.” She says turning back and turns to Volcana. She throws balls of fire at Beatriz that barely affect her. She continues by tossing more darts at her that she easily blocks, but is too late to see a fist connecting to her stomach and a foot sweep causing her to land on her side.

 

“Oh Bea, always wanting to go headfirst,” She remarks.

 

“Screw... you.” Beatriz wheezes out.

 

“Oh Bea, sempre o tolo impulsivo.” She whispers to Beatriz’s ear.

 

“Don’t make the same mistakes mother and father did.” Beatriz stares at her, scowling.

 

“Aww, little fire girl Jr, gonna cry?” she asks as she’s hit with a snowball. She turns to Tora.

 

“You’re gonna have to go through me for that to happen.” She says, her hands already glowing.

 

“Suit yourself.” she remarks flying towards her. While Beatriz lies there, sparks of green igniting from her hands.

 

“Not again,” She whispers, being reminded of her house where everything burned, where her sister lost it, where she was surrounded by the charred corpses of her parents. Where she lost everything.

 

“Not again.” She repeats, getting up from the ground, the flames growing larger.

 

“Not again!” She finally screams out, igniting an astounding amount of fire, the largest she’s ever created, directly at Volcana, who attempts to block it, but ends up being pushed back by the force of the fire.

 

“Finally, I always knew I could get under your skin to reveal your potential.”

 

“Shut up.” She replies, throwing ball after ball of fire.

 

I get up to the roof as I immediately notice the clash of fire between the two sisters, and she’s completely engulfed in flames. I try to get up, but I’m still weak from earlier.

 

“Shut up, shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” She yells out, Volcana hurls back with a blast which directly hits Beatriz. For a brief moment, she thinks she’s already won, she couldn’t be more wrong as she spots Beatriz pushing back, the green flames now consuming her body. Volcana is momentarily taken aback but shakes it off as she shoots out a combined wave at Beatriz, but it’s not enough.

 

“No way.” She mutters.

 

“There’s no way a brat like you is more powerful than me!”

 

“You want power?” Beatriz asks under her breath.

 

“Here, have at it!” She shouts as she flies right at Volcana, shooting through her attacks and crashing her onto a different roof, letting out punch after punch. I rush to her and grab her right forearm. She turns to me, tears running down her cheeks.

 

“It’s over.” I tell her. She looks back at her sister, beaten, but breathing.

 

“Bea?” Tora asks, looking incredibly worried. She takes a deep breath before getting up. I let go as she runs to Tora, hugging her tightly.

 

“It’s okay Bea. We won.” Tora whispers, trying to calm her.

 

---------------------------------------------

 

“Well shit. Looks like you paid her too much than she was worth.” The unmasked thug comments to Martinez, both watching as Volcana is carried away into custody.

 

“She did what was asked of her.” Martinez responds

 

“And that is?”

 

“Cebo. for our plans required a distraction for the hero. Or more accurately, heroes.”

 

“Alright, well, nevermind then, so now what?”

 

“The final phase can begin.”

 

Photo for Ukrainian clothes brand

 

M74 Coatsgate 08/06/2021

Prey

 

4K

Frans Bouma FreeCamera

ReShade3.0.7

DxTory .png

The Magic of The Magic Theatre x

Model: Heidi Lavon

Well the way the Security guard reacted when i pointed the camera at this building you would expect it to have been a TOP SECRET HQ !!!

 

A day in London for street photography !!!!

 

Big thanks to Dave Mason for showing us around the East End of London some amazing places around there , Was also joined by Tim Gareth for a 19 hour day !!!

Dave is doing tours for photographer around London i so advise you to sign up for one !!

 

www.flickr.com/photos/mrmay/7771873604/in/contacts/

 

Vintage Reserve Garage

121 S Cherokee Lane

Lodi, CA 95240

during the Final between West Indies and England in the ICC World Twenty20 Tournament on Sunday, March 4, 2016 at Eden Gardens.

 

© WICB Media

 

Landy

"Something about silence makes me sick

’cause silence can be violent

Sorta like a slit wrist"

-RATM

View On Black

 

* taking part @ ReAct Festival's photography exhibition (Ermoupolis - Syros - Greece)

  

Madampu Sankaran Namboothiri, popularly known as Madampu Kunjukuttan, is a Malayalam author and a screenplay writer. A prolific and versatile actor, a Sanskrit scholar, a teacher of repute, priesthood in a famous temple, National awards for the best screenplay in 2000 for the film " Karunam' and the Ashdod International Film Award for Best Screenplay for the film Parinamam (The Change) in 2003-- his life has been extremely colorful and eventful. He lives in the Kiralur village in the Thrissur district of Kerala, India, 77 years young.

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