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102 pages

English

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This Is Not a Photo Opportunity is a street-level, full-color showcase of some of Banksy’s most innovative pieces ever.

Banksy, Britain’s now-legendary “guerilla” street artist, has painted the walls, streets, and bridges of towns and cities throughout the world. Once viewed as vandalism, Banksy’s work is now venerated, collected, and preserved.

Over the course of a decade, Martin Bull has documented dozens of the most important and impressive works by the legendary political artist, most of which are no longer in existence. This Is Not a Photo Opportunity boasts nearly 200 color photos of Banksy’s public work on the walls, as seen from the streets.

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Publié par	PM Press
Date de parution	11 décembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781629630502
Langue	English

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Extrait

This Is Not a Photo Opportunity: The Street Art of Banksy
The author asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Copyright © Martin Bull
This edition copyright © 2015 PM Press
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-62963-036-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014908065
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover and interior design by briandesign, based on a design by Courtney Utt
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE ROOTS OF BANKSY
THE ART OF THE RAT
THE KEY TO MAKING GREAT SLOGANS IS …
MODERN LIFE IS RUBBISH
WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?
IF GRAFFITI CHANGED ANYTHING, IT WOULD BE ILLEGAL
TAKE THIS SOCIETY!
CAUTION BANKSY AT PLAY
BY ORDER NO BALL GAMES
WHEN THE TIME COMES TO LEAVE, JUST WALK AWAY QUIETLY AND DON’T MAKE ANY FUSS
PHOTO INFO/CREDITS
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to this new PM Press book, which is a kind of "greatest hits" collection of much of Banksy’s street pieces in England over the last eighteen years. Think of it as an all-you-can-eat buffet where no one is watching how much you indulge your appetite, and feel free to let out an enormous burp after devouring your way thorough over 150 colour photos, split into ten themed sections.
Banksy rarely explains his work, although interviews and statements do occasionally shed some light on what thought processes he was going through when he created it. In general I prefer not to try to "interpret" and intellectualise the meanings of Banksy’s street work, but for this book, and for the first time ever, I really did have to try to categorise my personal collection of nine years of photographing Banksy’s street work into subjects and themes. I hope I have done a good job.
I have begun ( pages 8–20 ) where it all started of course, his hometown of Bristol, with some rare photos of his early street pieces from the late 1990s, mainly executed in freehand rather than the stencils he has since become famous for.
When he moved to London in 2000, he took with him his perfectionism, sharp mind, passion to succeed, and a genuinely talented artistic hand. Plus a sharp knife and some cardboard! This change to stencils was purely for maximum street effect, and not due to any artistic deficiency. Using the new stencils, he went on to develop two major themes: the humble and despised rat ( pages 21–60 ), followed by the use of the slogan, the sound bite, as seen in the eleven examples showcased on pages 61–78.
We then bound through six more superb sections, where I try to pick out themes in his work: modern life; politics, especially the surveillance culture; the art and graffiti world; society; playful Banksy (including his latest piece at the time of this writing, October 2014); followed by childlike Banksy works; and finally "mysterious Banksy," those eclectic pieces that almost defy categorisation, including gorillas, monkeys, and Zorro. Naturally.

My books have been a long journey.
As a lad from picturesque but conservative Bath, a famous historic City in the West of England (one hundred miles from London), I naturally gravitated twelve miles further west to the exciting, creative, multicultural swamp they call Bristol.
I remember seeing Banksy’s artwork around Bristol in the early 2000s and later I recall my older brother harking on about buying one of his (early) screen prints before he baulked at trying to justify spending about $55 on a piece of paper (now worth several thousands). A few more years later, I found "This Is Not a Photo Opportunity" by complete and utter accident, halfway up a random rock face in the immense Cheddar Gorge (see page 64 ). The word serendipity was surely invented for that moment.
However, the moment of that discovery still didn’t get me Banksy hunting all over the country. It wasn’t until over a year later in London that I was taking photos of various graffiti/street art/whatever you call it and was struck by just how prolific Banksy had become and how his quality stood out amongst his contemporaries. This magnetic allure of Banksy was still pulling at me, despite my protestations. I found more and more, gave and took location information, and then in mid-2006 linked many of them together and offered free tours in three different areas of the capital city. Usually less than ten people turned up, but on the fourth tour I suddenly had sixty to contend with; it was like a herd of sulky French teenage tourists in central Bath on a summer’s day! Those tours around London’s most arty streets were a first, although many imitators now offer tours for money.
After some poking and prodding to make the tours into a book, I pulled together all my info tour routes, location details, photographs, and interesting detritus and aided by a few wonderful new friends, especially Stef, and the old punk DIY ethos of doing everything ourselves, I self-published it in late 2006, whilst doing a dreary casual job at the postal service. Little did I know what I was letting myself in for. I seemed to have caught the surf of a Banksy wave, and before I knew it the book was selling everywhere and I was regularly updating and improving it. Four more UK editions later, plus two in the United States, and a Korean version that apparently also exists, it has also enabled me to donate £34,723 to charities through sales of the books and my related fundraising initiatives. It always felt particularly right to support people living on the streets via a book about art on those very same streets. And all this from an idea written on the back of the proverbial barroom napkin!
I carried on finding street pieces, or finding excuses to travel off to photograph the latest one found elsewhere. I think I was touched by the Train Spotter stick when I was born. The world would be a far better place though if there were more collectors and geeks. I can’t remember the last time one of us was responsible for a military coup, famine, or intolerance. Just the odd bit of CIA computer hacking.
During these mini-adventures, it always felt slightly karmic how I may decide to go down a particular street that I have not been down for ages (or never been down), or to visit a certain area for no obvious reason, and then I find something I’ve not seen before, and sometimes a piece that very few people had ever seen before. Or something might have taken me away from my original plan a bus diversion, traffic problem, or talking to a random stranger and it was then that I found something. Maybe it’s just the law of averages, but it seemed to me that I found more than could be expected that way, and somehow I found things I never expected.

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