After posting earlier today about street art and graffiti, I went down a rabbit hole of looking through some of my photographs. I have always loved documenting murals, street art, and graffiti. Living in Philadelphia from 1986 to 2005 (and visiting frequently since I moved away), I got a lot of chances to photograph public art. Philly has a wonderful organization called Mural Arts Philadelphia, which was founded in 1984 as part of the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network. Artist Jane Golden set out to find local graffiti artists and redirect their talents from underground, illegal graffiti to sanctioned public murals. Philadelphia Mural Arts Advocates became a private nonprofit organization in 1997. The program is currently one of the largest employers of artists in Philadelphia, hiring more than 300 artists each year, including more than 100 people prosecuted for illegal graffiti. The program has created close to 4000 murals since 1984.

Here are some of my photos of murals and street art in Philly, in my current hometown of Santa Cruz, CA, and elsewhere, from 2002 to 2017.