I've avoided photos including tagging in Prague, but it's everywhere

October 11, 2011

The worst kind of tagging, too: just a style-less scribble with a black spray can, and it's everywhere around town. This is a monumental lookout over Prague, and every tourist should visit it as it gives a great view out across the river to the Old and New Town. Covered in the pinnacle of artistic graffiti - well: not so much on the artistic. Is this symptomatic of very strong inequality between the people who spend money downtown and the ones dossing on the benches throughout this park? I think that probably has something to do with it, but it's a hard and complex problem I guess. It would be nice to have some solution to it before all of Prague's walls look like this, rather than the 50% or so that seem to at present. I made this photo mildly surreal, because otherwise the graffiti just looks drab, but I think this way it pulls some of the underlying beauty into visible contrast.