Students create urban archive, preserving graffiti for posterity

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Thursday, December 8, 2005

Students create urban archive, preserving graffiti for posterity

By CHRISTINE FREY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

What cops, city crews and merchants labor to eradicate, a group of University of Washington students is working to preserve.

LOOK & LISTEN

Graduate student Irina Gendelman discusses the Urban Archives project and the hidden meanings in some of Seattle's "urban texts." (Flash 7 required)

In search of graffiti and other fleeting "urban texts," they've prowled downtown streets, explored back alleys, even canvassed freeway overpasses. Discoveries are photographed -- sometimes more than once.

What began as research projects on how people communicate in public spaces has become a unique documentation of Seattle's underground culture.

The "Urban Archives" project includes more than 300 images of graffiti, stickers and advertisements the students found throughout the city over the past year. The collection recently became available to the public through UW's Library Digital Collections.

While other areas of urban life have been well-documented -- architecture, for example -- this is one segment that hasn't been explored in Seattle, the young archivists say. But it's more than gritty photos. They hope their work can be used by researchers, urban planners, architects and others who study how people interact with their surroundings.

"I like the idea of preserving images ... for people to look at," said UW senior Emily Fischer, whose photographs appear in the collection.


		Joshua Trujillo / P-I
	University of Washington doctoral candidate Giorgia Aiello, left, and undergraduate student Emily Fischer contemplate graffiti in an alley behind University Way Northeast businesses as a buffed, or repainted, wall rises behind them. The graffiti are documented before being painted over.

"Oftentimes, graffiti gets buffed so fast that no one gets to take a picture of it, so it's cool that we get to be able to record some of that communication that's going on," she said.

There are conversations hidden in the graffiti, many of them complex, the students say. Some include coded messages or the comments of multiple writers remarking on each other's work. Others reveal darker sentiments: anarchistic, racist or homophobic.

There are detailed paintings, fancy signatures, elaborate hand styles, computer-generated stickers and fading "ghost signs" -- old advertisements painted on buildings.

By studying graffiti in different neighborhoods, the researchers hope to uncover clues about alliances, alienation and angst. Or something simpler: What are people talking about?

"The unique thing about this ... is that we're looking at texts that are in everyday life," said graduate student Irina Gendelman.

Urban Archives is the first live database in the UW digital collection that is all-student collected, said Ann Lally, head of the UW Library's digital initiatives. It's the most contemporary archive in the group, which includes collections of war posters and 19th-century actors.

The Urban Archives images could help historians decades from now "take the pulse" of the city in 2005, said Feliks Banel, deputy director of Seattle's Museum of History and Industry.

Imagine such an archive with pictures from a century ago. Said Banel, "The notion of having this from 1905 would be just absolutely priceless."

Some of the images the students have taken are already historic.

Fischer photographed graffiti -- white and black cartoonlike faces with red mouths -- on a Ravenna Boulevard overpass in May. When she returned nine days later, it had been "buffed" -- covered with paint.

Wiping out graffiti is the job of Vic Roberson, who oversees graffiti education and cleanup teams for Seattle Public Utilities.


	Joshua Trujillo / P-I
These graffiti were spotted in an alley behind University Way Northeast in the University District. UW students are documenting the graffiti as part of an urban archive.

His crew of three removed 30,000 "tags" on Seattle public property last year. The department spent more than a half-million dollars on graffiti removal and enforcement.

Graffiti are an eyesore, make people feel unsafe and lower property values, said Roberson, who hopes the UW project doesn't promote spray-painting messages on other people's property. "As an educational institution, I would hope they wouldn't just document but explore what this means," he said. "It would be great to help us all understand what's behind the different forms of graffiti expression."

It's a way to make a statement, said a 35-year-old former Seattle graffiti writer, who asked to be identified as Vito.

"I will be heard. My presence will be felt," said Vito, who moved to New York a few years ago. He doesn't care if people get offended by his art.

"Why can't I decorate my surroundings so when I walk down the street I don't have to look at Coca-Cola and Budweiser (ads)? I can look at my name," he said.

While many people believe graffiti are gang-related, the vast majority of them are not, Roberson and the students involved in Urban Archives said.

The students say they're not out to glorify graffiti, just to document and understand them. They plan to expand their collection next quarter to include tour-ism images and photographs taken by students studying abroad, and they intend to update the collection indefinitely.

Graduate student Tom Dobrowolsky tracked the art of a crew in the University District who called themselves The Breakfast Club.

He photographed their images and even collected some of it -- such as a moose drawn on a red duct tape that he found on a fence outside the Post Office.

Although he never met any of the graffiti writers, over time he felt like he knew them just by following their work.

"I walk up and down The Ave every day at least a couple of times and I thought, 'Wow, what if our paths crossed and I didn't know?' ... I kind of feel like I'm on their heels, still out of reach, because you never know when graffiti happens."