When posters go up in the street, you never know how long they'll last. Could be 2 hours, 24 hours, or a whole year. If I don't have my camera when I pass something, I always know there's a huge risk it will be gone when I come back, but this is all part of the game. When the artists put things up, they know there's a good chance it will get destroyed immediately and so when things stay up for a long time, there's a sort of pride, first that you picked the right spot and second that it was so appreciated that no one wanted to rip it down.
Last June Omino71 and Mr. Klevra spent a whole evening putting up posters all around the city and I went out the next day to photograph them all. I've never been so tired! By the time I got to the last one, about 8 hours later, in Trastevere, I was so happy to be done. The funny thing is, it's this last one that I photographed that stayed up the longest. Located right around the corner from Santa Maria in Trastevere, I saw an image of it on Eternally Cool just a few months ago. Tattered and worn, the poster had lived on, so it made perfect sense that they wanted to put a new poster up in the same place as a sort of celebration. The new poster, which shows them painting a Madonna, is a little hint for the people who had been staring at the original for the past year. Now they can finally understand who gave them this little artistic gift....may it last for another year!
