Why Tag That?
Anonymity - Austin Amtrak, 2010
Why do people tag buildings with graffiti? Why do people publish photography blogs? Fundamentally for the same reason: we fear being invisible, forgotten, unknown, overlooked; we fear that we may leave the world unmarked by our presence. Graffiti and blogging won’t help us much in the end, the walls we painted will fall down and our domain name registrations will lapse. In the short interlude that our signature is visible it will likely remain unrecognized by all but a handful but it is our small existentialist authentication for that brief time and those few.
But whose bust is that, high up on the right (detail below)? Who painted that there and why? The brickwork distorts the image but I don’t think it’s “W” so who is it? The profile looks familiar, I’m probably going to kick myself when I find out. Someone has me asking questions at least.
