Tiffany Brown Photojournalist

20080527 graffiti storm drains project

this started as a personal project when i went into the storm drains for the first time with my friend, writer matt o’brien, last december. matt spent four years exploring the storm drain system under las vegas, chronicled in his creative non-fiction book, Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas.

a long time fan of graffiti art, i was immediatly fascinated with the quantity and quality of the endless murals in the black depths of the tunnels. i started to join matt when he took others into the tunnels and eventually met several graffiti writers who were open to me joining them when they went into the tunnels to paint.

not knowing what it would become beyond an adventure and a growing body of pictures from the tunnels below the las vegas strip – bizarre enough in their own right, i worked on it on my own time until april. somewhere around there i pitched the story to our arts writer, kristen peterson, to see if she would be interested in working on it together for the paper, focusing on the graffiti artists that turn to the tunnels to paint….and the incredible, constantly changing graffiti art gallery below caesars palace.

there was some hard selling and great discussions to see it to the light of day in the paper, pardon, so i’m very happy to finally see it publish.

i’d love to hear what you think. there were several new mediums i used for the first time in this project as well, including timelapse and panoramas.

THE MULTIMEDIA VIDEO:

THE 360-DEGREE PANORAMA:

A SLIDESHOW OF GRAFFITI MURALS FROM THE DARKS OF THE STORM DRAINS: