Murals and People

The streets and alleys of San Francisco are a vibrant art gallery. Throughout neighborhoods, hundreds of walls and fences are adorned with colorful works of art featuring themes ranging from cultural heritage to social political statements.

As San Francisco continues to play a central role in the digital age, the city’s artists choose to use a very old analog method for communicating and storytelling. The building walls are in fact, the cave walls of San Francisco.

For San Francisco, wall murals serve not only as public art and a form of communication and storytelling, they effectively deter vandalism. There is an unwritten “law” among artists, taggers, and vandals that you don’t graffiti over someone else’s mural. For the most part, this ethic is honored.

Here are some photos of street murals and the life that unfolds around them. I like to photograph people who are sitting or standing near street murals, engaged in daily routines, and not looking at or paying much attention to the colorful art around them. I believe the neighborhood residents appreciate the street murals and how they enhance their lives. Otherwise, why would they want to hang out and sit on street curbs and in alleys that are full of trash and homeless people?