“What if street artists could work on any surface, not restricted by scale, accessibility, safety, or rules?“
Award-winning UK photographer Joseph Ford answers this question in a new project he calls, “Impossible Street Art.” Collaborating with eight other artists (such as Peeta, Levalet, and Victoria Villasana), Ford imagines possibilities for street art in public spaces that are normally inaccessible due to their scale, restrictions, access, or safety issues.
His own explanation of his work is, “storytelling with a side order of off-beat creativity and an occasional sprinkling of optical illusions.“
Initially, he photographed a number of locations he considered as impossible for street artists to access. Some of these include the Seven Sisters cliffs in Sussex, the Panthéon in Paris,and the centre of a Los Angeles highway.
He then gave enlarged prints of these photos to the participating artists, and they added their street art to the print. Ford then returned to the original sites, and re-photographed these altered images on easels in front of the original backdrop. These photographs were carefully aligned to show what the street art might look like if it was real.
The resulting images imagine “a parallel universe where (artists) have complete artistic freedom.”
I found both his work, and this project in particular, to be quite fascinating. If you want to learn more about either the project or Ford’s other work, please visit his website.
All photos below are by Joseph Ford:
Artist: Denis Meyers – National Theatre London
Artist: Levalet – Brighton Marina, U.K.
Artist: Morley – Los Angeles
Artist: Ador – The Pantheon, Paris
Artist: Victoria Villasana – Les Arenes de Picasso near Paris
Artist: Peeta – Shoreham Cement Works
Artist: Ador – Seven Sisters, U.K.
Artist: JanIsDeMan – Balcome Viaduct, U.K.
