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A Year in the Life of a Wall
One of the greatest and most frustrating things about street art is that its lifespan is inherently finite. Especially in high-traffic areas, no piece is permanent, static, or safe. Take the wall on Queen Street West just out from below the railway and just west of Gladstone. Kevin Steele, who has spent much time documenting Queen Street West (his beautiful stitched-together photos of the block of buildings that burned down earlier this year remain the best portrait of the stretch) has paid close attention to that one span of concrete, taking photos of it regularly over the past year. His photos show how one wall constantly changes—continually added to by a fleet of artists, painted over entirely to erase all trace of them, then added to again.