The final project for my Digital Photography I class was to use the basic technical skills we had learned to create a series of shots based on the theme, “dreams.”

I’m an unusually concrete thinker so an abstract theme isn’t easy for me. By the Sunday afternoon prior to the Tuesday class, I was getting a little desperate for ideas. Knowing that graffiti is sometimes psychedelic, I drove down to Atlanta’s Little Five Points and then caught DeKalb Avenue toward the Krog Street Bridge.

I didn’t see this mural on the side of Studio 900 until it was too late to drive past it. After taking a couple pictures on the other side of the Krog Street Bridge, I went back up DeKalb avenue and took pictures of the mural.

In the end, I chose to use a five-shot series of the face in the middle for my project. It was successful: the class agreed I’d done a good interpretation (and they were surprised when I proudly told them that the pictures are not in black-and-white).

This mural was put up in connection with the Living Walls project which had a conference in Atlanta beginning August 13; it was during this conference that an artist known as Gaia put the mural up. I took the pictures August 15. By August 18 — the day after my class — the mural had been tagged.

Apparently the wall was “claimed” in the graffiti community but, due to a buffing, the artists associated with Living Walls didn’t realize it when they put up the mural. In the spirit of the street art community, though, they have chosen to let the tags remain. I understand and agree with the decision, but I do wish that Vomet (the wall’s “owner”) had at least had the decency to cover up Gaia’s art with something just as beautiful.

The bottom line, though, was that the mural was up for probably no more than three or four days. So the mural itself was far more ephemeral than I’d realized. It really was a dream that came true for only a few days…and I was just lucky enough to capture it during that time.