Poet Fool | Life according to graffiti: an alternative social documentary by Patrick Joseph.
“Humans leave traces of existence and experience not just through official records in art, media and literature but also in raw graffiti which occur consistently at any given time in history. Some may be poetic, others foolish, and many in between." - Patrick Joseph
It’s always a pleasure to come across a new photobook that has something to say about the current world around us, and boy this is a good one.
Poet Fool by Patrick Joseph is a catalogue of raw graffiti documents from public spaces. Gathered over the course of five years and from across 15 different cities, the book contains over 100 images of symbols and words found in graffiti left behind by anonymous artists.
Presented as a visual essay, Poet Fool offers a new way of looking at something that, on a daily basis, we would typically ignore. There’s a sense of
familiarity that comes from studying the documentation of such a common act of defiance, that at the same time acts as an amazing insight into the way people think and feel.
The collection ranges from handwritten messages to stickers or stencil work, the carelessly scrawled to the selectively positioned and from personal confessions to political statements.
This is society at it’s most expressive and unfiltered.
The author Patrick Joseph is a multimedia artist who has released Poet Fool as his first book-based project, hoping that the ideas explored in the work can reach as many people as possible. “Raw graffiti is fascinating because it’s everywhere but most people tend to ignore it. But if you actually pay attention, it has potential to reveal something interesting. It can give us clues on how different people experience and interpret the world today.”
And it’s very true; this is not your usual social documentary. Whilst the street art lacks authorship, certain pieces give away more about that person than we could have imagined. Whether it’s regarding love and hate or freedom and control, all of the work within the images is raw and honest.
“I saw a disjointed narrative from raw graffiti which inspired me to create Poet Fool. The streets are littered with residues from our past, both personal and universal, manifesting itself as writings or drawings on walls, pavements, bridges and other public spaces. This project is my way of documenting and studying this phenomena which seems so intrinsic to human nature”.
Poet Fool is a collective snapshot of today’s people talking about today’s culture. Published as a limited edition of 100, if you want to know what they have to say, pick up a copy for yourself.
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