There are times when you meet someone haphazardly only to realize you share similar passions, interests and perspectives. This is what happened when I met Vinny Cornelli. Soon after we exchanged information, we checked out each other’s work and we realized we wanted to collaborate somehow. So here we are.
Vinny is in finance by day and by night he documents public art through his project Street Layers, photographs for Brooklyn Vegan & Brooklynstreetart and now writes for Friends We Love as a guest blogger. This past summer he needed to get his Radiohead fix and planned a tour through Europe that included back to back concerts, street art photography and studio visits with some great artists. He’s got stories for days and we couldn’t be happier that he’d like to share them with us.
Intro Post by Vinny Cornelli
When I tell people about how I got into photographing street art, I reference a couple of photos I first took that instantly whipped me into an individual who admires and appreciates the movement. I often think back to a day in Soho ,when I was waiting for my girlfriend at the time, armed with my first DSLR camera. See she was the photographer, not me. But I was intrigued with capturing life, so I picked up a camera at one of those shady Ebay stores. A Nikon D70. They don’t make those anymore. Far from an antique, but well worth it’s weight. I was standing next to a wall that had 3 panels on it; one was an old school Faile, one was a Bast, and the third was a Kelly Burns post up.
I fell in love with those photos and I would always go back to them…and get lost in them.
But as I think of what actually sparked the passion for the tattered and torn…well, that was initially photographed in Prague with [that same girlfriends] point and shoot camera 1 year prior…this is it, with no reference to street art at all.
I’ve never lost my love of traveling the world to find new art and inspiration. Sadly, it keeps getting harder to accomplish this task here at home. Some people will disagree with me on this topic, but I think it’s worth saying, all the same – NYC has been much more difficult these days to photograph the type of collaged, aged and layered street art I aim to capture. Reason being: the walls are constantly getting buffed.
I remember one weekend dropping in on the crew working at 112 Greene Street, in preparation of The Combine’s, Work 2 Do event. Work 2 Do was held in what was once a raw conceptual fine and performance art space from the 1070’s. It was estimated that 50+ artists of various street art and graffiti art crews took turns over the course of 2+ months to create a ceiling to floor art’d out experience…and it was all under the direction of Royce Bannon, member of the Endless Love Crew. Man, I love their work.
But during one of the the many times I visited the gang working, I was talking to El Celso, also part of the ELC, and I mentioned that it was really difficult these days to walk the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn in search of deep textured images on walls and doors. And he replied, “well, since Mayor Bloomberg has taken office, he’s beefed up the Anti-Graffiti Squad, and they’re pretty on top of buffing the walls.”
And damn, Celso is right; I would walk from my East Village apartment at 5:40am on my way to work, and I would see those fuckers painting brown and silver walls and caged storefronts. What a sight to wake up to. I couldn’t help but give them the finger as I got into my cab.
For me, that’s why I started shooting street art; it all started with the layers…these walls were once ridiculous, living things.
Perhaps I was spoiled. For a couple of years I had the walls of 11 Spring Street to photograph every Saturday and Sunday morning when I was living in the Lower East Side. I would get up early, before the sun rose over the buildings, and shoot the art between the art. And each week it would morph some. It was cathartic…therapeutic.
It was a shame that the infection of high end condo’isms feel the need to spread their webs over some of the greatest building landscapes we’ve had the opportunity to see.
Back to the point. This is why I feel the need to hit up cities freer in their own right. They’re open to having the community express themselves in a positive way on their city walls. It’s a wonderful thing. And this is why I traveled Europe this summer, and which is why I will continue to seek it out for as long as I can.
I don’t do Cancun.
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