Initially it started by noticing the cleaning of the subway frames for paid advertisements. Before they post a series of new advertisements someone comes around and gives them a heavy-duty scraping with a 5 in 1.
The resulting destruction instantly drew my eye. They reminded me of contemporary art, abstract expressionism and the cultivated patinas of ethnographic art. So I started snapping pictures of these gorgeous pieces.
The rest of the images show the destruction of advertisement. People constantly pull the edges of pasted notices all over the city. It’s an irresistible temptation.
Sometimes it’s scrawling on the imagery with commentary. Other times it’s pure defacement of the advertisement. These are extreme examples, hence the title Shredded.
Although this is a narrowly focused series, you can easily see the destruction of the Supermodels and PR-RAW. Note that this is an idea I have been exploring since the nineties.
Maybe it was heavily reinforced by living in New York City and then working with ethnographic art. But it is an idea I have played with for many years.