Accidental Collage

I felt like I always saw accidental collages whenever we were travelling to go an exhibit/run workshops with DR.ME so it kind of felt inevitable that I would start documenting these things especially as we were starting to go to more and more different countries. Then the pandemic happened and all travel stopped for everyone. This kind of made the project different, I think initially I envisaged it would just be accidental collages that I found in the wild but it kind of became a collaborative project with people from all over the world sending me images of film posters torn through on the subway in New York one day to fashion billboards in Paris the next. 

It’s been fun and I’ve made kind of internet penpal friends with people who have a similar eye for them in the wild like Hisham Akira Bharoocha (@softcircle) and Sarah Boris (@sarahboris_ldn) who are regular contributors. I think I’m drawn to the accidental collages because they are temporary and only last a few days until whoever owns the billboard covers over them with a new advert/poster. I also love that they turn the world into a huge free public art gallery. As I write this there are two large billboards that are a 30 second walk from our studio that are so beautiful they really could be hanging in an gallery. The fact that they’re made in a hugely unintentionally collaborative way, from the collection of different images pasted on top of each other over time through to the weather/person paid to remove them strips one into another.

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Joe Castro
Accidental Collage,
Captured by Hisham Akira Bharoocha in New York
Accidental Collage
Captured by DR.ME in Madrid
Accidental Collage
Captured by Sarah Boris in Paris
Accidental Collage
Captured by DR.ME in Barcelona
Accidental Collage
Captured by DR.ME in Barcelona