Text and the City Images & Commentary

This photograph of a red pillar box was taken on St.Mary's Street in Cardiff. Not as old as the Penny Black, the British Pillar Box is better known as the Post Box. There are 115,000 in Britain and some are over 150 years old. Having been owned by the General Post Office, the Royal Mail and now Cosignia, they accept 20billion pieces of mail each year, including 2million Christmas cards each festive period. Found in cities, towns and villages throughout the British Isles, some stand erect on street corners, like the one we photographed, with some found attached to telegraph poles or built into exterior walls of country post offices.

The stand-alone post box (Fig 1.0) featured was chosen due to the unique graffiti on the back side. The specific point of the task was to photograph written text - graffiti may not be compulsory on this prop, but its individuality compared to the rest of the post-boxes in Cardiff makes it stand out. Not everybody likes graffiti and some do not even call it 'art'. However, even though we cannot work out what the words say, it is individual to a person or group and as a whole may represent the youth culture of the City.
All British pillar boxes are red, and represent an older time of society. The silver spray paint used here makes the writing stand out on the background, and even though unclear as to the content, anyone who looks on is bound to have an opinion on whether it is visually positive or negative. The binary opposites of this image are what makes it interesting. The box comes from an era of over 100 years ago when graffiti and such artwork were not invented, nor permitted. However, with this image we can now see post-modern culture embedded on a vintage cultural item. The person(s) that drew this art had arguably wanted to make a statement. People of all ages use post boxes, and they are used everyday. They have not gone to a backstreet where nobody walks to air their expressionism on a concrete wall; they have sprayed where everyone can see. The writing is on the back of the box - not on the front where the letters are posted. This may have been done this way simply as there is more room to write what they desired on the back. The 'scribble' is rather large and takes up the majority of the length of the box. It may not look 'pretty', but it a great commentary on our current society structure, and even though there may be graffiti on several post boxes in other cities in the UK, I would argue that this one of St.Mary's Street is unique in what it says, and how it is presented (size/font/composition).