The Writing on the Wall

I love graffiti. Great graffiti is beautiful and thought-provoking: it's art, it's comedy, it's social commentary, it's political protest, it's philosophy. Sure, some graffiti is inane, but some graffiti stays with you and makes you think. And of course, I'm hardly the first person to notice - by this point, artists like Banksy have raised graffiti to an accepted form of artistic expression, with glossy books in the MoMA gift shop and everything.

But just because I'm not setting the trend doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. I'm always on the lookout for interesting graffiti when I'm in a new city. I recently discovered this great wall - flanked on both sides by completely untouched white, in the quiet Rue de Verneuil in Paris. I spent fifteen minutes photographing my favorites. Here are some of them:

Copyright 2010 Sara Harding