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Copyright © 2005 Andrew Varlamov, All Rights Reserved
It is a wonderful winter day in this old courtyard in Saint-Petersburg, covered by fresh snow. As the archway and the courtyard have been a favorite place for graffiti painters for a long time, as the bookshop "Na Liteynom" is the favourite place for book collectors, students and scientists. Here they can find rare and old books (to my surprise I've found reference to this shop in traveller's guide "St Petersburg" issued by "Lonely Planet" publishing house - 3rd edition, "Where to buy" section). Behind the bookshop's entrance the second courtyard is thickly covered by graffiti. But be carefull and get ready to meet some strange person ! Some years ago (approximately 2001) booksellers caught one of graffiti painters and asked him to paint a new masterpiece in place of an old advertisment of a bookshop. The theme of new graffiti was inspired by the illustrations of Alexander Florenskiy for fable "Frol the First Bookprinter" written by Vladimir Shinkarev. Five illustrations were replicated on the wall of the archway. The fable can be formulated briefly as "old books-money in cash-tasty supper". Two times in text of the fable Frol is compared with a dog (Hi, China - 2006 is the Year of the Dog). I regret that I cannot present English translation of the modern Russian fable, but you can enjoy other stories and drawings at homepage of art-group "Mitki". Every time I visit the bookshop, I notice that well-known pictures in an archway have been covered with new graffiti, destroying them. That is why I suspect that if the WWP community approves an event theme "Changes" then I will come here again with tripod and camera. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year ! Have easy stitching and bright panoramas ! Behind the scene : how this panorama was made Caption in Russian - Граффити под аркой рядом с книжным магазином "На Литейном"
Shortcut to this page: http://geoimages.berkeley.edu/wwp_rss/go/n1507
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