Venice Beach is a place of many things. Yesterday I went for a skate with the goal of taking pictures and during the course of the day a theme emerged. Art and the people it touches. Venice is adorned with art, some of it commissioned a lot of it not. Murals can be found on the sides of many of the buildings and graffiti is everywhere else. But quite honestly seeing the people who live their lives in and around the art was equally as compelling.
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Photo credit: Aaron Spohn
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Photo credit: Aaron Spohn
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Photo credit: Aaron Spohn
A question sometimes asked is what is the purpose of art? To provoke? Is it to entertain? To dress up a dreary building? Art too can be many things and during the course of this day, how I thought about art, in this moment, evolved too.
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Photo credit: Aaron Spohn
As I stopped to photograph the art on the face of two condemned buildings and a construction fence, a couple suddenly appeared and began a photoshoot of their own. A previously unoccupied bike became a prop and the posing began. These pieces are beautiful enough to inspire this couple and this moment but they're only temporary. In a few months, they'll be gone, replaced by new structures and perhaps even new art. While most people may be oblivious to this fact, will it matter when it's destroyed?
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Photo credit: Aaron Spohn
And then another couple, another construction fence another green bike. And while space will too change again soon it's these photos that will bring a permanence. And in a sense, this is the essence of street art. Quick bold expressions living only until the streets take them back. Whether tagged or whitewashed or torn completely away. It's the photos that capture and preserve the beauty and creation.
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Photo credit: Aaron Spohn
And while art can brighten a dreary wall and bring pizzazz to a photo shoot, just around the corner another reality exists. and a colorful backdrop merely stands witness to the dark and dire existence before it.
Los Angeles has a huge homeless population and it seems these lost souls drift west until they can go no further, and because of that, the boardwalk is strewn with the wreckage of these humans and their remnant belongings.
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Photo credit: Aaron Spohn
Surprisingly many of these homeless peoples turn to art for sustenance. Whether it's music, or sculpture, or performance, or painting these grubby hands create to eat and drink and smoke and survive.
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Photo credit: Aaron Spohn
So just around another corner, I find this transient artist, toiling away with makeshift tools in his hard-fought studio. Sheltering his work from a cold gritty wind, all while knowing his time is limited and today could be the day the police arrive to wipe away this encampment away.
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Photo credit: Aaron Spohn
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Photo credit: Aaron Spohn
If pain and struggling alone made for great art, these tired humans would all be masters and boardwalk a gallery. But as the sun starts to set I realize that life itself is art and that paint lying upon a canvass or bodies lying upon the ground are all beautiful and all of value.
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Photo credit: Aaron Spohn
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