Nearly 20 years ago I was involved in a debate with a co-worker regarding the virtues of graffiti. The streets surrounding my office in Hollywood were filled with slogans, drawings, and paintings, but the majority of images were just ugly, angry scrawls. In my opinion, it was a blight on the community, and showed utter contempt for personal property.   My colleague, however, took the position that tagging, and graffiti in general, was not only an important form of socio-political expression, but was also an actual improvement on the urban landscape that had been taken over by corporate interests who littered our cities with their logos.   She felt graffiti enhanced our surroundings and added colorful creative artwork to an otherwise dull environment.   I strongly disagreed.

At that time, I had just purchased my first house and, as a new property owner, I argued fiercely that graffiti was really just vandalism, pure and simple.   It was another form of assault on civilization.   Our cities were being used as an anarchist's canvas and there was nothing we could do about it.

What I failed see and what I refused to acknowledge was that some of the graffiti around town actually had artistic merit.   Of course I knew whom Keith Herring and Jean-Michel Basquiat were, and loved their work.   But while I considered myself fairly knowledgeable of art history, I must have blocked out the part where they had both gotten their start in the streets.

Now, two decades later, I find myself wandering the streets of foreign cities searching out, with passion (and obsession), graffiti and street art.   It started a few years ago while I was working on a photo project called "Looking Down".   The series was all about found objects and junk on the streets from the perspective of someone looking down.   I was on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood combing the sidewalks and streets for things to shoot when I came across the logo of a band stenciled on the pavement.   I snapped a few shots and moved on.   Later that day, after I scanned the negatives into my computer, those images literally popped off the screen.

That stencil, and those photos, opened my eyes and expanded my mind, allowing me to appreciate the incredibly creative world of graffiti and street art.   I immediately started noticing amazing paintings and murals on walls everywhere.   I spotted quirky little stickers with silly, nonsensical sayings on them plastered on street signs, mailboxes, and trashcans.   I fell in love with the newfound vibrant colors and patterns of the city.   I began to recognize the vast amount of artistic talent that filled the streets.

This site focuses on one genre of street art that really speaks to me: stencil graffiti. Used like advertising slogans and logos, stencil graffiti is unlike other forms of graffiti.   It is smart and edgy.   It embodies the very essence of pop art.   And, it is quite different, in tone and texture, from the spray can scribbles and gang markings that have demonized the word "graffiti".

The artists create their visions in a cut out form, a stencil, which gives them the ability to render their images over and over again with very little variation.   Stencil graffiti reflects, and in many ways, responds to the fast-paced corporate, MTV world in which we live. The images are often humorous, subversive, and iconoclastic in nature.   They appear overnight, sometimes on a daily basis, and are often a reaction to the news of the day. However, while stencils can be sprayed on a wall in only seconds, some stencils are so large and intricate that they can literary take weeks to create.

When it comes to expression, everything and everyone is fair game and nothing seems to be off limits.   Stencil graffiti is artistic freedom at its best.   From politics to sexuality, pop art to religion, popular culture to anarchy, the imagery is boundless.   Some of it is intricate and delicate.   Some of it is blobby and bland.   Yet, all of it makes a statement.   It can be insightful, thought provoking, and provocative, as well as sophomoric, moronic, and just plain silly.   It always exists as a reflection of the geo-socio-politico environment that it appears to adorn.   Social angst and desire are often intertwined in the images that sometimes appear to scream out for the viewer's attention, daring us to observe, examine, and question.

Stencil graffiti has been around for decades.   In the early days it was used mainly for political propaganda purposes.   In the '70s, conceptual artists started taking advantage of the medium, using stencils for more creative purposes.   While stencil graffiti is fast becoming a worldwide phenomenon, with a surge in popularity in the last couple of years (especially in Argentina and Chile), it has recently gone out of favor in some places.   In Såo Paulo, Brazil, for example, where some of the most amazing stencil art in the world emanated from only a few years ago, traditional graffiti artists now look down on stencils as a form of "cheating".   Fortunately, there is still a small, thriving community still cranking out the stencils.

I started traveling throughout South America beginning in May 2004 and spent more than a year visiting Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay.   My main purposes for the trip were travel and adventure and rest and relaxation.   However, while in Santiago, Chile, only a couple of weeks into my journey, I noticed a small stencil of a man wearing a baseball cap. That stencil changed the course of the year for me.   At first, I was photographing, what I hoped were, cool shots of stencils.   But little by little, over the next several months, I became obsessed and actively began to seek out stencil art.

One of the first things that struck me while photographing stencils was the reaction I got from most people walking by me on the street.   Countless people would ask me, with befuddled looks on their faces, "Why are you taking a picture of that ?"   Other times people would utter something to their friend, under their breath, and they would both giggle.   To me it was similar to a question I got from many of my friends several years ago when I informed them that I was traveling to India.   Confused, and scratching their heads, they would ask, "Why would you want to go there ?"   My response to them was, an incredulous, "Why wouldn't you want to go there?"

One of the most interesting aspects of stencil graffiti, and street art in general, that differentiates it from other forms of art, is that it is subject, not only to the elements, but also to the whims and alterations by property owners, city employees, ordinary people passing by and other artists just looking to leave their mark.   Sometimes stencils are simply painted out, but more often than not, a layering effect takes place transforming them into something beyond the control of the artist's original intent.   This layering is perhaps one of the most compelling aspects of street art.   It keeps it fresh and alive.

In Chile and Argentina, when you find one stencil, others are usually nearby.   Often, artists will try to upstage one another by placing their stencils, either over their competitors work or, in a more prominent position.   Finding just the right spot is an art form in its own right.   I have a hunch that many stencil artists prefer the relative safety of a group setting, although, maybe they simply think it looks cool having it all bunched together.   This is why many photographs of stencils have bits and pieces of other stencils in the frame.

With this in mind, I have photographed stencil art in a way other photographers may have shied away from by embracing the very idea of "layering".   In the spirit of street art, I am that other artist who stops by to leave his mark.   Sometimes I manipulate an image to create my own vision of a stencil.   Other times I am just a photographer documenting other people's artwork.   Either way, I still maintain a great deal of control over an image. I get to decide how to frame or crop something.   I get to choose what to include, and what to discard.   I can shoot in color or black and white, etc.   All of this adds a photographic plane, or layer, allowing the photos to take on a life of their own in a marriage of photography and art.

I will almost certainly receive some form of criticism for many of my editorial and graphic choices.   However, I decided early on in the process to not just generically document stencils.   Creating an encyclopedia or textbook on stencils would be best left to an art historian.   Anyhow, any attempt to fully catalogue stencil graffiti by me or anyone else would probably be futile, especially in light of the fleeting nature of the medium. Instead, I chose to go with my gut creative instincts, which have always served me well.

This site features only a small fraction of my photographs of stencil art from South America. I have reserved my best images for an upcoming book that should be available around December 2005.

Reid Martin