All posts tagged: Photos of 2024 on BSA

Photos of 2024 on BSA – #1: Odisy in Belfast and a Year of Possibilities

Photos of 2024 on BSA – #1: Odisy in Belfast and a Year of Possibilities

We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2024. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. We’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street. Happy Holidays Everyone!


This year, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, we had the honor of meeting many community and neighborhood people, historians who shared stories of The Troubles, people still deeply affected by them, graffiti writers, street artists, and festival organizers. The creative spirit has a way of helping us see our age and ourselves. The painting duo Odisy knows how to celebrate hip-hop culture and some of graffiti’s roots while fully embracing the adventures that await us.

Let’s be optimistic for the new year, a year full of possibilities.

Vibes. Odisy. Hit The North Festival. Belfast, Ireland. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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Photos of 2024 on BSA – #2: Veks Van Hillik and his “Salmon of Knowledge” in Belfast

Photos of 2024 on BSA – #2: Veks Van Hillik and his “Salmon of Knowledge” in Belfast

We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2024. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. We’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street. Happy Holidays Everyone!


We have memories and gratitude for the talented artists, organizers, and community whom we met at the Hit the North Festival in Belfast, including Veks Van Hillik, the French surrealist who created this holy Salmon of Knowledge, channeling the spirit of Irish mythology, in the city’s center.

Veks Van Hillik. Hit The North Festival. Belfast, Northern Ireland. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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Photos of 2024 on BSA – #3: Tabby Takes Manhattan

Photos of 2024 on BSA – #3: Tabby Takes Manhattan

We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2024. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. We’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street. Happy Holidays Everyone!


High meets Low in this photo depicting a salute to New York’s mythic heyday, never achieved again but often reconsidered, reconfigured, always victorious and rancid in new and surprising ways. As ever, we did it all for love.

TABBY. Manhattan, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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Photos of 2024 on BSA – #4: Alicia, Swizz, Basquiat, and SEF.01

Photos of 2024 on BSA – #4: Alicia, Swizz, Basquiat, and SEF.01

We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2024. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. We’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street. Happy Holidays Everyone!


Street Art has been adopted as a lifestyle by some celebrity art collectors in recent years, adding to their personal brand and elevating the artist’s legacy in some ways. Brooklyn Museum exhibited 100 celebrated works from the personal art collection of musicians and cultural icons Swizz Beatz and their wife Alicia Keys, often including prominent, recognized names like Jean Michel Basquiat. Here SEF.01 channels the aesthetic and re-presents Keys as a girl, surrounded by references to childhood and the Brooklyn Street Artist in his mural.

SEF.01. The Bushwick Collective. Brooklyn, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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Photos of 2024 on BSA – #5: Sara Lynne Leo and New Year’s Resolutions

Photos of 2024 on BSA – #5: Sara Lynne Leo and New Year’s Resolutions

We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2024. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. We’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street. Happy Holidays Everyone!


Street artist Sara Lynne Leo reminds us that we can now begin preparing our New Year’s resolution and achieve a better us. We like what she says at the end, “Be better. But believe you’re enough”. Unless you are like our friend Marlene, then you may be too much!

Sara Lynne-Leo. Manhattan, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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Photos of 2024 on BSA – #6: Phillipe Petite on a Highwire at St. John the Devine

Photos of 2024 on BSA – #6: Phillipe Petite on a Highwire at St. John the Devine

We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2024. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. We’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street. Happy Holidays Everyone!


Astonishing. On a humid rainy night on the Upper West Side this summer, Phillipe Petite reprised a version of his highwire walk between the Twin Towers precisely 50 years earlier. With musician Sting below him in this massive cathedral of St. John the Devine, how else would you describe this uniquely New York show to the other 1,500 guests?

Phillippe Petit & Sting. Cathedral of Saint John The Divine. Manhattan, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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Photos of 2024 on BSA – #7: Optimo NYC and Friends Under the Bridge

Photos of 2024 on BSA – #7: Optimo NYC and Friends Under the Bridge

We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2024. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. We’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street. Happy Holidays Everyone!


They say it takes a village. This photo pays homage to the community of writers and artists in New York and to tried-and-true, born-and-bred New Yorkers like Optimo NYC, who bring it to the street year after year with a lot of heart.

OPTIMO NYC & Friends. Manhattan, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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Photos of 2024 on BSA – #8: Never Satisfied “Forever Forward”

Photos of 2024 on BSA – #8: Never Satisfied “Forever Forward”

We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2024. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. We’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street. Happy Holidays Everyone!


He says he’s Never Satisfied, and he’s been that way for years, but his work stays fresh. May we all be moving Forever Forward.

Never Satisfied. Brooklyn, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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Photos of 2024 on BSA – #9: Nekst, Guess, and Ethics in Street Art

Photos of 2024 on BSA – #9: Nekst, Guess, and Ethics in Street Art

We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2024. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. We’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street. Happy Holidays Everyone!


As we close out the year, we reflect on the powerful tension between graffiti and street art’s raw authenticity and its appropriation by the commercial world. This image of the Nekst campaign on Manhattan streets is both a statement and a question. Featuring iconic faces like Claudia Schiffer and Anna Nicole Smith—aged and distorted by weathered wheat paste—it sparks nostalgia for the 90s while confronting the passage of time.

At its heart, the campaign addresses a larger controversy: the fashion label Guess allegedly lifted Nekst’s signature tag and turned it into a commodity. Nekst, a prolific and bold graffiti writer revered by the community even a decade after his passing, made his mark in high-profile spots that earned him enduring respect. Seeing his legacy co-opted without consent raises ethical questions about the fine line between inspiration and exploitation—particularly when major fashion houses profit off street culture without acknowledgment.

We discussed it here more in detail, but as far as the installations themselves, they nailed it.

NEKST. Manhattan, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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Photos of 2024 on BSA – #10: Flaco the Owl a Folk Hero for a Minute in NYC

Photos of 2024 on BSA – #10: Flaco the Owl a Folk Hero for a Minute in NYC

We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2024. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. We’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street. Happy Holidays Everyone!


2024 brought New York a new fine feathered superhero – an escaped tufted-eared Eurasian eagle-owl named Flaco whose daily plans became a focal point for people all over the city. We celebrated his liberation by vandals at the zoo, his sightings and adventures via social media, his tributes in paint and pen by artists and fans on the street, and we coined a description quoted by the New York Times. Sadly, we also mourned his loss and dedicated one of our Images of the Week to him in March.

Naito Oru. Manhattan, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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Photos of 2024 on BSA – #11: Support the Kids

Photos of 2024 on BSA – #11: Support the Kids

We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2024. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. We’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street. Happy Holidays Everyone!


We are deeply grateful for the fans and friends we meet in cities, at symposia, or on cozy living room couches. In times of economic, political, and social uncertainty that leave many feeling like we’re standing on a precipice, one thing remains clear: the future lies in our friends, families, communities, and especially our kids.

If you know a young person, support them. Guide them. Remind them that they are doing a good job and that they matter. Your encouragement can make all the difference.

1457Wave or Bluze in Wynwood, Miami (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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Photos of 2024 on BSA – #13: Inkman’s Thin Line

Photos of 2024 on BSA – #13: Inkman’s Thin Line

We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2024. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. We’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street. Happy Holidays Everyone!


The polarity of positions is popular for simple journals today, a shamefully reductive assessment of the world and our complex interactions. If you were to fall for such easy explanations about politics and power, your only responsibility would be to pick a team. Sadly, that is the formula that takes hold right now, making citizens believe that life is just so black and white, left and right, wrong and right.

In truth it is a thin line, and many of those lines are blurred, leaving many vacillating between love and hate. And they feed off one another. Shakespeare’s famous depiction of love and hate comes in Romeo and Juliet, which is the most famous love story bought and sold. The young lovers’ intense and pure love contrasts sharply with the hatred between their families, the Capulets and Montagues.

“My only love sprung from my only hate!” encapsulates this tension. Love exists in a world filled with hatred.

IMK. Manhattan, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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