During a hitchhiking excursion that went extremely sideways in 2007, I found myself wandering in a meandering direction northeast along the river Segriá in Lleida, Spain. The entire wall along the river was covered in colorful art. This was the first time that I ever photographed street art and I spent hours trying to capture the experience with my trusty Canon ELPH pocket camera (6 megapixels!).

One of my favorites from 2007 up above. Below is the 2021 version, a little duller, a little sadder, and mostly ruined by someone else stepping over it – not a metaphor for the year at all.

Still, I was curious to see how if the street art had changed in the last 15 years and was pleased to find interesting pieces during my ramblings. Art in Lleida has spread from the river to the walls and across the city center. The first thing that popped out to me was this beautiful bird mural near the train station by Oriol Arumí:

Over in the historic center under of the shadow of the massive La Seu Vella (The Old Cathedral) are a few large murals crafted for Lleida potFest held in 2021 showing how far the city has come to appreciating this artform.

Lidia Cao

Llukutter

Belin

This recreation of “The Apse of Sant Climent de Taüll” is a surprisingly intricate tile project made up of super tiny photos. I’m having trouble finding the artist of the piece so please leave in the comments below if you know who did this.


And of course, I returned to the riverside where my street art photography journey began. Most of the full-sized pieces had been painted over, but there are still plenty of interesting characters, tags, and weird stuff here.

One artist is particularly devoted to cats…

An in the spirit of the holidays, I give you Badass Santa.

And that one mural you know was definitely crafted after March 2020…

Street art is such an interesting thing to photograph as its always changing and what was once new and shiny becomes covered or fades away. It’s also interesting to see how you’ve changed revisiting a place. I can’t wait to see what both I and Lleida will look like in 2037.

As I became a bit nostalgic while putting this together, I added links below to all the cities I’ve photographed over the last 15 years in chronological order. Enjoy!