Pavement graffiti: an exploration of roads and footways in words and pictures

This project is an invitation to notice the paved surfaces of roads and footways and to read what is written on them. It is based on some hundreds of photographs of pavement inscriptions, taken over a period of thirteen years, and is presented in two parts of equal value. The creative component is Pavement appreciation, an on-line gallery of images and interpretive text (www.pavementappreciation.net). The written component is a cross-disciplinary exegesis that canvasses different aspects of pavement graffiti. Paved surfaces are so familiar that they have become almost invisible, so utilitarian that they have seldom merited contemplation. To counter such neglect, the project takes the reader on a series of intersecting journeys. The first journey is a metaphorical expedition through the written word, searching for evidence of the pavement's symbolic presence in people's thoughts. Along the way this expedition pays brief calls on road engineers and urban eccentrics, literary luminaries and newspaper letter-writers. The other journeys are photographic traversals of streets and sidewalks, scanning the asphalt for signs and messages written in chalk or spray-paint. These journeys are exercises in reconstructing stories – of vilification and romance, marketing and mourning – from fragments gathered off the pavement. Such stories transcend particular locations and individual instances of graffiti, and offer insights into the complexities of everyday life. The project is a travel guide to the horizontal. It suggests by example how the pavement might be studied for new perspectives on the built environment and the lives of people who inhabit it.