The Unintentional Beauty Of Graffiti Removal

New Mexico-based photographer and artist Mattie Kannard has spent the past eight years photographing graffiti, but only after it has been painted over by the building owners. The results often resemble an unintentional pastiche of Mark Rothko’s style of abstract expressionism.

More info: Mattie Kannard, Flickr (h/t: dangerousminds)

“I love graffiti. But I love buff even more. When graffiti is removed, it is “buffed.” It gets painted over. As in, “Man! That tag I did last night was buffed this morning.” Before I knew the correct term, I called a buff “paint over,” and in 2009 I started taking and collecting photographs of graffiti that had been painted over. Over the last three years I’ve amassed almost two hundred pictures of beautiful buffed pieces,” she said.