soot

There have been a couple of cool photos of sooty buildings recently bouncing around the blogosphere. Here in New York, was this photo, originally posted at trevorlittle.com (click to see it full size):



That photo shows the dramatic effect of power washing a building on the Lower East Side, a building that apparently hasn't been cleaned since coal use started to decline many decades ago...

And today I ran across this photo on inhabitat (via Streetsblog), showing a "reverse graffiti" artist. Instead of putting paint on walls, these street artists "seek out soot covered surfaces and inscribe them with images, tags, and even advertising slogans using scrub brushes, scrapers and pressure hoses." Click to see more reverse graffiti images:



Even though the air here in NYC is vastly cleaner than it used to be, I still get black soot building up on the sills of open windows. Perhaps I should make an art project out of it rather than just spraying it into submission with 409...