2011 for me will go down as the year i discovered just how creative the art of protesting could be. Time magazine gave there ‘Person of the Year’ slot this year to the protester not one individual which i think is a great statement. So here’s a thew images of Creative protesters from around the world taken from buzzfeed.com
Time magazines front cover for it’s 2011 ‘PERSON OF THE YEAR’ edition. The Graphic art was created by Shepard Fairey.
From a student protest in Chile. The signs say: “We have the right to be upset. Excellent education for all.”
From an occupy protest in Seattle Washington.
From a protest in Egypt.
Taken at an occupy protest.
HERE COMES THE NEIGHBORHOOD is a Short-Form Docuseries exploring the power of Public Art and innovation to uplift and revitalize urban communities. Below is an episode taken from the series but i urge you to click on the picture above that will take you to the HCTN site in order to watch the other episodes, it’s a great concept.
In this episode some of the artist talk about the thought process that goes into the work they do and also Martha Cooper the famous street art photographer i’ve blogged about before speaks about her involvement in the project.
Recently i took a trip to the V&A museum to check out the postmodernism exhibition which was a beautifully curated exhibition. One of the stand out things for me in the exhibition was the work of Ray Petri and how his Buffalo Style influenced British culture at the time.
Buffalo is one of the most influential styles in fashion; the founders were essentially Ray, photographers Jamie Morgan, Cameron McVey and Mark Lebon, and Mitzi Lorens. And later on includes Nick Kamen (of Levi ad fame) and his brother Barry, as well as Neneh Cherry and Naomi Campbell and. Ray Petri was the vision leader of the gang. Petri brought street fashion into the mainstream when before it was just all about power dressing. Ray turned his back on designer clothes. He pioneered the DIY post-punk styling. Ray believed that you can re-create all of these looks from thrift shop clothes and stuff that you’ve borrowed from your grandparents. Petri’s look took bits and pieces of Britain’s post-punk ’80s: East Indians, blacks, punk whites, rude boys, mods, ragamuffin Jamaicans, New Romantics and boxers, and tossed them into an exotic whole. His revolutionary ideas spawned a generation of designers.
Ray Petri pioneered an aesthetic that brought the natural style of men of African descent to the forefront of fashion, adding sensuous androgyny with hardcore urban survival edgy-ness. Petri brought black models into the limelight, discovering Naomi Campbell at 14 and Neneh Cherry before her first recording. In fact using black models and models of other races was something pioneered by Ray, “no one had done it before.” “It was about the face, as they would say, ‘Start with the face and the rest falls into place” said Mitzi Lorenz one of the founder of Buffalo.
Jamie Morgan (for The Face) The Harder They Come, The Better,1985 (printed 2000). Black and white gelatin silver print. Felix Howard,styled by Ray Petri.V&A ; E508-2001
