Just before the signing of his new bestselling book at the Hi-Fructose booth during this year’s San Diego Comic Con, photographer extraordinaire Brian McCarty snuck out into the streets of San Diego to shoot his latest subject, the Shepard Fairey x StrangeCo Mr. Spray figure. Read what McCarty had to say about the shoot after the jump.
“I was first exposed to the work of Shepard Fairey in 1991, when he was still a student at RISD and I was in NYC looking at Parsons School of Design as a high school senior. My best friend Cort Winsett had accompanied me for a long weekend of exploring the city and broadening horizons. Included on the tour was a prerequisite mugging in Times Square, a chess match with a crazy homeless guy in Washington Square Park, and something else that stuck in my mind as equally exciting – street art.
One of Cort’s friends had graduated the year before and left Memphis to study fine art at the Rhode Island School of Design. He took the train down to meet us for a night, and we wandered the streets together. At every crosswalk, bus kiosk, and reachable street sign that we passed, John – the then freshman at RISD – would pause to place a vinyl sticker of André the Giant. Like countless others that would follow, John was a part of a posse, virally spreading the André meme and Shepard Fairey worldwide.” More here.