by Barry Tanenbaum

The Street A.K.A. Museum exhibition that ran at the Portsmouth (New Hampshire) Museum of Art from mid-May to mid-September this year showcased the work of six international street artists, and part of the exhibit included new work created for the exhibition on the streets of the city.

Artwork in this genre has been called tagging, graffiti, urban art, street art, even vandalism, but the six artists chosen for the show stayed strictly legal as they sprayed and painted with the permission of the property owners. Residents of Portsmouth could view installed artwork at the museum and take a walking tour of the street art.

David Mendelsohn’s assignment was to create images of the artists and their completed street work for the exhibit’s catalog. While the show generated comment, conversation and controversy, David stuck pretty much to the task at hand. “I found some of the work very impressive,” he says, “and in this case totally legal and sanctioned—the walls and other surfaces were donated to the cause of art.”

David scouted the locations—which included the side of a convenience store, the side of a utility trailer and a wall of an abandoned gasoline station—a day before the scheduled shoot. “I came at the same time the shoot was scheduled so I could consider the light, its direction and how surrounding buildings would affect the shoot.”

In one case he had to take into account accessing the cameras, lenses, ladders, reflectors and tripods that’d be stored in the back of his Jeep. To guarantee he could quickly and easily get to the gear during the shoot, he parked right in front of the mural on the day before the shoot and then slept in the car. “I didn’t want anyone taking that parking space,” he says.

David’s biggest challenge came at the end of the shoot. “I was working with a limited palette, with subdued colors rather than the vivid color I normally work with, and of course I wanted the color palette to be consistent. The last photo was of Bumblebee, and his strong black and yellow colors were very different from the pastel look of the other artwork. So I had to go back into post processing and make some changes to the color palette balance on the other photos so they’d work with his. He became the baseline, the template, so to speak.”

The five images you see here were David’s contribution to the show’s catalog, which itself was something of a special presentation. “To give it an urban look to complement the exhibit, the catalog’s binding was a strip of rusted metal with screws that held it together. Each catalog came with a jar of organic wheat paste, so the purchaser could take the catalog apart and paste any of the pages on a wall of his or her choice.”

Presumably with the permission of the wall’s owner.

To see more of David Mendelsohn's work, check out his website: www.davidm.com.