InVisible Stories
Die Fotografiereihe »In Visible Stories« beschäftigt sich mit den Eregnissen die entstehen, wenn Passanten mit Murals interagieren und unbemerkt Teil der geschaffenen Streetart werden. Die Personen werden in ein Bild hereingezogen und ergänzen es durch ihre Handlungen. Es ergeben sich Momente, in denen leise Geschichten erzählt werden und der Betrachter achtsam sein muss, um diese zu erwischen. Die Fotoreihe entstand 2015 in Lissabon.
InVisible stories
Street art has long been part of Lisbon‘s culture. Until the 18th century, there was a tradition of all-white buildings. After the earthquake of 1755, richer areas began to incorporate colour and tiles into walls. Early graffiti was perhaps the poor man‘s answer to those expensive tiles.
Following the democratic revolution in 1974, this self-expression increased. Now, tags and scribbles cover all over the streets.
Graffiti can be a big disgrace for a city and also a part of what makes it unique and special, depending on your viewpoint. Even if you dislike the „mess“ of an ancient capital, it is possible to diversify between meaningless scrawls and impressive pieces of urban art with a great artistic value.
The city government of Lisbon saw this value for the city and has begun to support the primary underground art movement to bring it everywhere in the city appearance.
The city council made old and empty buildings available to artists and created special areas and walls for creative freedom, like the walls in „Calcada do Gloria“ in Bairro Alto.
Even for the older generation street art turned to an interesting and funny activity to feel younger again and to bring new life in the everyday life, how the organisation „LATA 65“ shows. They are offering special street art workshops for senior citizens.
The „Galleria de Arte Urbana“ (GAU) publishes the newest discoveries of street art and tries to collect pictures of them, to save them for a long time.
They have a good reason to do this. Urban street art is a very fast and fading art movement, which can be destroyed or over painted in every moment. Today there might be a great masterpiece of street art and on the following day it can be changed or gone forever.
Although the paintings are everywhere in the city, sometimes they seem to be invisible, so that the people of Lisbon don´t see them anymore. They don´t notice what the urban street art is doing with the city. In every way the graffitis are telling stories and interfere in their surroundings, and that way more than expected.
Big paintings and big walls don´t stay still at the location they are placed. Of course they don´t move, but they are interacting and changing their surroundings in a way, that the whole city is telling stories and fairy tales at every corner. The main actors in these colourful worlds are the passers-by, which walk on the streets, the pavements or the small alleys of Lisbon. The interesting point is, that they don´t even recognize that they are part of a second city with big monsters, giant crocodiles and happy beings at the walls.
A big dark giant is caught in a dark blue sky behind a brick wall, he tries to grab for people to kidnap them through small windows into his own world. A blue being makes a big red spider fall down on the people at the street. The pink panther is not this friendly guy everybody used to know, he turned to an angry criminal who threatens a man at the stairs. A big battle between two war-robots takes place in the middle of a busy street and nobody seems to fear them. A huge giant is scared by the people who pass him and he tries to hide, but he is quite simply too tall to hide.
The photojournalism student Jonas Cleve made a journey of discovery through the streets of Lisbon to search these stories, the people are getting to forget. The stories he found are maybe still there or changed to new stories. The people just have to open their eyes.
