This year marks ten years since Damon Belanger, a graphic artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, first turned everyday shadows into playful little scenes. He was commissioned to create 20 “fake” shadows in downtown Redwood City to bring more creativity to the streets, and the results caught people’s attention right away. Bike racks, mailboxes, and street signs became tiny stories on the pavement, surprising and delighting anyone who happened to notice them.
Looking back on how the project has evolved, Belanger says he’s been surprised by how quickly people connected with the idea. “It seems obvious now, but when you do something new, you never know if it’s going to work… will the angle make sense? Will it really look like a shadow? But as it turns out, I never had to explain what I’m doing. People immediately see that they’re shadows, and it’s fun because it prompts them to think of their own ideas, like this spark of an idea gets the juices flowing.
It’s so wonderful how people all over the world have heard about this project and have become so intrigued by the idea. The overall theme here is transformation and the unexpected. When you think about it, you don’t really pay much attention to shadows until something interesting happens, like you notice a shadow cast by a tree that looks like an animal or something odd. It’s kind of like looking for shapes in clouds. Or making shadow puppets. Imagining what might happen if you were to transform the item casting the shadow.”
More info: Instagram | damonbelanger.com
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