Everyone may remember when the Atlanta Police Department triumphantly announced a spate of warrants and subsequent arrests of 7 prominent graffiti artist criminals a few weeks ago. Now that these dangerous persons are off the streets, the city is busy attempting to erase all of their handy work. Only problem is, in most cases, they can't completely do away with it because they're too cheap to paint over entire surfaces. The result is a collection of visually-marred surfaces with vast stretches of mismatched gray scale and random black and white boxes scattered about. BURNAWAY has a great gallery of these spaces and a contemplative piece about the value of trying to rid of graffiti after it is applied. As noted previously, we in no way endorse property destruction. But to argue that these half-assed clean-ups look better than the graffiti itself is a fool's errand. And we'd imagine it has the opposite effect of deterrence.
· Dodge & Burn: The Remnants of the Atlanta Anti-Graffiti Task Force [BURNAWAY]