Glance
For years, I’ve walked past this beautiful eye on my way to the Museum of Modern Art in Valencia. The entire image is slowly crumbling, but the eye has remained intact so far. Valencia can get scorching hot, but thankfully it rains rarely. The eye isn’t looking at me, as I pass by, but somewhere […]
Alice
On a wall in a suburb of Valencia, Alice is slowly fading away, along with the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter. All characters from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat are far from sweet and funny—they look sly, almost mean; cunning is a better word. Alice looks […]
Indian
I found it an intriguing image when I came across it in Ruzafa, one of the trendiest neighborhoods in Valencia. The boy is dressed in a late 19th-century outfit with a large Native American headdress. It evokes the time when Karl May, a German writer who had never been to America, made “cowboys and Indians” […]
Cartoon
What an incredibly clever idea to tear out pages from Donald Duck and paste them up. A cheap way to wallpaper, and you can look at it for a long time. Cartoonish images have been pasted over it by others. In the top left, the white section—I photographed it deliberately. It creates a nice contrast […]
Berlin
A piece of Berlin in Valencia, “Ernst Kurzhals & Co, Berlin.” A search on Google didn’t reveal much, except that there’s also a similar poster somewhere on a wall in London. Of course, there’s a phone number you can call. I didn’t. I think leaving something invisible, in the dark, and untraceable adds to the […]
Burn
A burned house I walked past on my way to a boxing gym. It’s uninhabited and stands on a corner, decaying in an otherwise trendy neighborhood. To me, it’s a kind of Abstract Expressionism, a Rothko or a Pollock, but created by fire, firefighting, and time. Isn’t that just as intense as how those great […]
Rise
This photo was taken in Cabanjal, a neighborhood in Valencia that used to be considered one of the poorer areas. Now, Cabanjal is slowly being taken over by wealthier people, drawn by the old Cuban-style houses, the cheap real estate prices, and the beach just a stone’s throw away. The original residents are being gradually […]
Entrada Prohibida
It seems like a cheerful scene, colorful, with a man and a woman in the bottom left corner enjoying a drink. But the building is collapsing, and the beautiful doors are broken and serve no purpose, except as a canvas for the spray paint used on them. The real work of keeping people out is […]
Bicicleta
In Valencia, you have to pay attention to the small details, or you’ll walk right past them. This lady can be found near the Cathedral of the city, but she’s very small. She has a face from a different era than her bicycle. It could well be that the head has been placed on a […]
In progress
I walk there blindly, as I have for years. Past the Cathedral and then to the left, I arrive at a little square with a terrace that overlooks this work. I can sit there peacefully, watching this mural. The mural has its own distinct visual language, and, oddly enough, it never gets spray-painted over or […]