A Love Letter For You...

Yesterday I went on an adventure to Philadelphia to try and find Steve 'ESPO' Powers' 'A Love Letter For You' murals.

The murals are all in West Philadelphia, an area of the city that has seen much better days but an area that has a lot of heart and full of character. The idea of the murals was to capture some of the character, and to try and brighten up a very run down area.

ESPO started working on the murals in 2009, and now there are 54 of them all dotted along the L train line, some visible from the ground, some only visible from the train. So I spent a couple of hours walking around and riding the train trying to find as many of the murals as I could...

 It was so much fun walking up Market Street looking down all the side roads wondering if there'd be a mural there, looking up and trying to see some up by the rooftops, getting the train and hopping off at every station, going to both sides of the platforms peeking out and seeing which ones I could see from up there, looking down the train tracks and seeing rows of murals along the way...

 

 He'd covered an entire building in one of his murals...

 The building is apparently for sale!

 Out of all of the ones I managed to find, I think these two were my favourites...

 I remember seeing a photo of the 'If you were here, I'd be home now' mural on the internet when first started working in Leeds - so it was a very funny feeling to be looking at it in the flesh.

 I think in all I saw about 30 murals, maybe a couple more (some of them were just too tricky to get good photos of), so there are still 20+ that I need to find. Annoyingly, I found out after I got back to Brooklyn that if I'd carried on walked just a couple more blocks I would have seen a load more.

Still, that means there are some more murals to find next time.

There was a short film made about whole Love Letter For You series last year, it gives the supposed story behind all the murals and the idea that they were written by a man who wanted to tell a girl how he felt, putting up murals along her commute to work - so when she was looking out the window of the train, she'd see all the messages...

It was a great little adventure - or pilgrimage, and I'm so glad I finally saw them. I love how he plays with words and does fun street but meaningful street art.