Impossible Street Art
A significant new project by British photographer Joseph Ford, who most recently took home a Silver Award in the Environment Category at The AOP Awards 2023, shows what kind of world street artists might come up with in the absence of restrictions. A new initiative that features the first collaborations of prominent worldwide street artists including Peeta, Levalet, and Victoria Villasana.
Photography Joseph Ford Ford’s starting point was to imagine if street artists could work on any surface, not restricted by scale, accessibility, safety or rules. Locations included in the first release of Impossible Street Art include the heavily guarded Panthéon in Paris, England’s iconic Seven Sisters chalk cliffs and the centre strip of a Los Angeles freeway.
The Panthéon, Paris, with Ador
Collaborating artists are given large, high-quality photographic prints of these locations as canvases, creating original, hand-made artworks with no digital manipulation. Ford then re-shoots each artwork in its original location, creating captivating windows into a parallel universe where street artists have been given free rein.
The first release numbers eight prints, with each work highlighting its artist’s unique style – from Ador’s imaginative characters to Peeta’s optical illusions and Victoria Villasana’s integration of textiles into her murals. All works have been created by hand, with artists challenged to work at a far smaller scale than they are used to.
Peeta
Victoria Villasana
Ford has overcome a number of challenges to shoot each artwork against its backdrop, from replicating the right lighting, weather and angle, to being chased away by security guards, attacked by hungry mosquitoes, and seeing the artworks blown over by strong winds.
“Street artists are well known for having this immense creativity that already pushes at the limits of what’s possible. I wanted to see what we could create together if those limits were removed altogether.”
Ador
“I’ve been blown away with the ideas they came up with, and it’s been a privilege to use my photography to situate those ideas back in the real world and highlight how limitless the imagination of the street artist is.”
Levalet
Morley
JanIsDeMan
Artists featured in the first print release include: Ador (France), Denis Meyers (Belgium), JanIsDeMan (Netherlands), Levalet (France), Morley (USA), Peeta (Italy), and Victoria Villasana (Mexico). Further artworks in the project are underway, with more locations and contributing artists to be revealed later this year.
Collaborating artist Victoria Villasana said: “The Impossible Street Art project caught my attention because it interrupts reality for the viewer and allows me as an artist to reimagine the world with all limits removed.”
“Street art says that anything in this world can be a canvas, and Joseph’s process takes that idea and runs with it. There is a long-term vision for this collaboration and I’m excited to see what other artists will bring to it.”
Dennis Meyers
About Joseph
Joseph began his adult life sensibly enough by studying French and Italian at the University of Cambridge and the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, then horrified his parents by moving to Paris to be a photographer.
His work concentrates on people and optical illusions. Twins blended into a wall with custom knitwear? Check. A railway line merging into a zipper? Check. Painting street art on a national monument? Yup, that too.
It is held in the permanent collection of the Hamburg Art and Design Museum and the Musée d’Art Urbain & Street Art in France, and has been exhibited as part of numerous festivals, including the Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles, Zürich Aufsehen festival, Andorra Land Art Biennale, Trieste Photo Days, Lishui Photography Festival, China.
His work has won numerous awards and has inspired collaborations with LVMH, Missoni, Lacoste and many others.
To see more of his work, visit his website or follow him on Instagram
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