Street Art – Cochabamba Style

I’ve always been a fan of street art. After all, I grew up in NYC in 70s and 80s. The time when hip-hop was born and you couldn’t walk down a street or onto a subway platform in NYC without spotting a piece someone had worked on the night before. Admittedly, even though I loved the colors and shapes, I grew up thinking street art was bad. As in, bad people created this and liking it would not be a good thing.

Fast-forward to now. I love and appreciate the vibrant colors and shapes of street art and the talent required to put these pieces together. I love more when the piece is visually appealing and communicates some sort of important message. I haven’t found a lot of the latter here but I have found some lovely artwork that I would like to share with you via this blog post. You will find the style here super-unique as it features a lot of “cholitas” (indigenous women dressed in indigenous clothes). The colors are usually pretty bright and bold (which I love).

But before I share….a few words about the process of capturing these images.

Thankfully I took a photography course here in Bolivia last year that taught me a lot about lighting, my subject, angles, etc. And while I learned a lot in that class, the photos you see here are definitely still amateur in nature. They are raw pics of subjects I consider to be beautiful.

I also will share that pulling out my camera on the streets of Bolivia is not totally safe. So many times I have to stop, pull out my iPhone, take a few quick pics, and put the phone away. All as conspicuously as I can so the camera, and what I’m doing, goes unnoticed. I also have to make sure there is no sun directly on the subject otherwise the photo will not be very good. And finally, I have to make sure I don’t get hit by a car while I’m doing all this as sometimes taking a good shot requires that I stand in unusual places like the middle of the street.

And on that note, I share with you “Street Art – Cochabamba Style.” Because I’m so cool (and I think you are too), I have included a few shots I captured in Argentina and Brazil too. Look up the hashtag #streetartcochbamba to check out more stuff from me or follow my Instagram account @hadyontheweb. ENJOY!