So What Does Banksy Look Like, Anyway?

In this week’s New Yorker, Lauren Collins profiles British graffiti artist Banksy, as famous for his anonymity as he is for his cheeky artwork (including spray-painting images of pigs on police cars and unleashing a blowup doll dressed like a Guantánamo prisoner at Disneyland). Well, that anonymity may not be assured much longer; Complex magazine’s news blog was intrigued by a mention in Collins’s piece of Banksy photos taken by a Jamaican photographer and posted to his Website, then removed, in 2004.

This sent Complex to web.archive.org, where they dug up the photos. We’re sad, of course, that Banksy (if it is he) doesn’t look at all as one person described him to Collins: “He was the grimiest person I’d ever met. He looked like someone from one of those British industrial towns from the nineteenth century. There was a layer of grit on him.� He just looks like some bloke in glasses. How disappointing.

The New Yorker Helps Unveil BANKSY [Complex]
Banksy Was Here [NYer]