Astrid Reischwitz’s series, Street Art, incorporates a passion for street photography, a love for visual arts, and a fascination with the transient character of an art form often created anonymously. This work employs a well-used motif of torn posters, peeling paint, and graffiti, but adds an additional layer by introducing a human element — pedestrians. The people in Astrid's photographs may or may not be reacting to the art, but they are clearly reacting to the space created by her masterful composition. Reminiscent of Garry Winogrand, Reischwtiz’s camera is capturing a moment that is too fleeting for anyone to see in real time. With the luxury of the print, we have the pleasure of suspended motion to linger our gaze on the image.
Recent exhibitions by Reischwitz include Street Art solo shows at the Griffin Museum of Photography and the Boston Public Library, as well as group shows at the PhotoPlace Gallery (Middlebury, VT), the Cambridge Art Association (Cambridge, MA), the Bedford Free Public Library (Bedford, MA), the Brush Gallery (Lowell, MA), Photography Atelier at Lesley University (Cambridge, MA), the Concord Art Association (Concord, MA), and the deCordova Museum School (Lincoln, MA). She exhibited her series Expectations, focusing on the changing bodies of pregnant women, at Emerson Umbrella Center for the Arts (Concord, MA).
Artist Statement
In this series of photographs, I am interested in capturing the interactions and relations between street art, the passer-by and the urban environment.
Street art is an art form brought directly to the viewer, in many cases without any prior selection by curators, art critics or the media. In composing each photograph, I position myself near existing street art, often in lonely, urban areas, and then wait for people to walk by.
Through their reactions or lack of reaction to the artworks they become both viewers of and participants in an art making process. The people in these pieces become a part of an art event themselves.
Ripped paper or the application of paint over the original art work documents traces of former interactions with the art by unknown participants and shows another layer of art mediated by urban life.
By choosing the specific street art in its unique, if out of the way location, I maintain a degree of control over the process while having no control over the people or actions that will become an inherent part of the photograph. I often use a slow shutter speed to underscore the fragile and transient character of the artwork as well as people passing by.