Gestalten

Urban centres such as Barcelona, Paris and Berlin are places whose landscapes are characterised by anonymously created artwork and signatures that are inventing new visual codes. This street art is much more than mere graffiti. In addition to using spray paint, today’s enterprising urban artists use stencils, wheat paste and found objects to manifest their ideas. They work in an interdisciplinary way and are often creative nomads travelling and working their way through cities around the world.

Berlin is a particularly strong magnet for international street artists, inviting them to leave their mark. But the impressions that they leave are inevitably fleeting, as their art falls victim to the city’s unrelenting development. Luckily, editor and photographer Jürgen Große has worked with Michael Bonk for years to track and archive Berlin’s urban art.

Urban Art Photography presents artwork from Berlin that communicates with its environment in a subversive way. Successfully capturing this interplay, the book serves as a permanent documentation and time capsule of these constantly changing images.

The creative process and constant development of the pieces through interventions by other street artists are vividly depicted in Urban Art Photography. Their evolution is presented in this large-sized book as authentically as the transience of an art form that makes the city its canvas.