The People Who Keep Cities Going (11 Photos)

Eleven walls for people whose work is easy to overlook.

A quarry worker looks out over Aberdeen. A lamplighter reappears in Doetinchem, a Singapore mural recreates a Chinatown hairdresser, and an elder in Portugal passes on craft knowledge. Across these eleven works, artists turn working lives—past and present—into public memory.

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⛏️ “The Quarry Worker” — By Martin Whatson in Aberdeen, Scotland 🇬🇧

A grayscale worker sits above a burst of tags and color on the harbor-side wall near Regent Quay. Aberdeen Inspired says the 2022 Nuart work honors people in northeast Scotland’s granite industry and the stonemasons keeping those skills alive.

💡 Industry Fact: Aberdeen’s granite industry produced tens of thousands of memorials, ranging from grave markers to statues commemorating people and events.

More: The Quarry Worker in Aberdeen

🔗 Follow Martin Whatson on Instagram

📷 Photo by Brian Tallman.

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🐕 Nullawil Silo Art — By SMUG in Nullawil, Victoria, Australia 🇦🇺

At 26 Calder Highway, Jimmy, a local working kelpie, sits beside a farmer on the curved concrete silos. SMUG identifies Jimmy in his own post about the mural. Buloke Tourism records that painting began on July 5, 2019, and finished 14 days later.

💡 Name Fact: The Australian Silo Art Trail says the galah and stick engraved on Jimmy’s tag nod to the town’s name: “nulla” means “killing stick,” while “wil” comes from “willock,” meaning “galah”.

More: 24 Times SMUG Made Walls Look More Real Than Life

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🚒 “The Braves of 9/11” — By Eduardo Kobra in Manhattan, New York, USA 🇺🇸

Kobra painted the 2018 mural at 780 Third Avenue from Matthew McDermott’s photograph of firefighter Mike Bellantoni. The artist’s official project page says the number 343 on the helmet refers to the firefighters killed on September 11, 2001.

💡 Art Fact: Kobra says the colors were intended to convey life, renewal and rebuilding. His project page also records that Bellantoni survived the attacks.

More: The Braves of 9/11 on Street Art Utopia

🔗 Visit Eduardo Kobra’s website

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🐑 “Retrato de Osvaldo” — By Manolo Mesa in Acquapendente, Italy 🇮🇹

Created for Urban Vision in 2017, “Retrato de Osvaldo” portrays Osvaldo, a local shepherd. The wall stands opposite the church whose frescoes helped inspire the work, and the Museo della Città says Mesa met Osvaldo during his stay and included a small figure of himself near the bottom of the wall.

💡 Site Fact: The mural was informed by frescoes depicting a flock of sheep inside that church.

🔗 Follow Manolo Mesa on Instagram

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🧹 Graffiti Removal Guy — By DS in London, UK 🇬🇧

In 2013, DS returned to an Essex Road wall to find a man painting over “Bad Kitty,” a stencil he had installed only about eight hours earlier. In an interview, DS said he photographed the removal, turned one image into a new stencil and placed the man’s portrait on the same wall. Fast Company reported that when the man returned, he left the portrait in place.

💡 Process Fact: DS returned hoping to photograph the man removing his own portrait so that he could turn that scene into yet another stencil.

More: Graffiti Removal Guy Comes Back to Discover an Image of Himself

🔗 Visit DS Art’s website

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🏮 “De lantaarnopsteker” (“The Lamplighter”) — By Rosalie de Graaf (RoosArt) in Doetinchem, the Netherlands 🇳🇱

Rosalie de Graaf painted “De lantaarnopsteker” on a wing of Doetinchem City Hall in 2023. Doetinchem’s public-art catalog says it honors the workers who once tended the city’s gas lamps.

💡 Work History Fact: Doetinchem’s gasworks opened in 1863, and Reint Sevink is recorded lighting the city’s lamps with sulfur sticks around 1870. The same source says lamplighting was paid side work because each round took relatively little time; it also identifies the former city hall painted in the background.

More: 4 Photos of the Lamplighter Mural

🔗 Follow Rosalie de Graaf on Instagram

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🚣 “Il pescatore” — By SLIM Safont in Taranto, Italy 🇮🇹

For T.R.U.St.’s 2021 edition, SLIM Safont painted the 30-meter “Il pescatore” on a wall in Taranto’s Paolo VI district. Project curator Gulìa Urbana explains that Safont searched for an image rooted in the area’s identity, choosing a fisherman on the Gulf as a tribute to a profession common in Taranto and the neighborhood.

💡 Festival Fact: T.R.U.St. stands for Taranto Regeneration Urban and Street. Its 2021 edition produced 16 works by 16 artists across six areas of Taranto.

More: Mural by SLIM in Taranto

🔗 Visit SLIM Safont’s website

📷 Photo by Cosimo Calabrese.

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🧵 “Le Mur des Canuts” — By CitéCréation in Lyon, France 🇫🇷

At Boulevard des Canuts in Croix-Rousse, a blank concrete facade becomes a neighborhood of stairways, homes and residents. The City of Lyon dates the 1,200-square-meter mural to 1987 and its first revision to 1997; silk spools, looms and tall canut windows preserve the district’s weaving history.

💡 Labor History Fact: The 2013 repaint retained the canuts, Lyon’s silk workers, whose uprisings over working conditions took place in 1831 and 1834.

More: 10 Photos of the Wall of the Silk Weavers

🔗 Visit CitéCréation’s project page

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🪡 “The Fisher Girl” — By Fabian “BANE” Florin in Mons, Belgium 🇧🇪

A young woman repairs a fishing net inside a painted room framed by sunflowers. VisitMons places the mural at 12 Avenue de Cuesmes.

💡 Local Fact: BANE noted Vincent van Gogh’s connection with the area. Van Gogh moved to Cuesmes in 1879 and decided there in 1880 to become an artist; the workers and miners of the Borinage became early subjects.

More: Amazing Murals by 3D Master Fabian Bane (7 Photos)

🔗 Follow Fabian “BANE” Florin on Instagram

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🧶 “Professores de Saberes” (“Teachers of Knowledge”) — By Daniela Guerreiro in Arega, Figueiró dos Vinhos, Portugal 🇵🇹

An older woman holds up a small pink piece of handiwork while resting her other hand on the table. Guerreiro says the mural honors elders who carry knowledge of traditions and crafts and pass those skills from one generation to the next.

💡 Community Fact: FAZUNCHAR’s official 2023 archive identifies the work as Professores de Saberes and describes it as a homage to the wisdom of older people. The festival’s work-in-progress post shows the wall beside number 363 on Avenida da Arega in Arega.

💡 Language Fact: The name FAZUNCHAR comes from laínte, a dialect used by the area’s textile traders, and means “to make”.

More: 4 Photos of Teachers of Knowledge

🔗 Follow Daniela Guerreiro on Instagram

📷 Photo by Miguel Oliveira.

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💇 Hairdresser Detail from “Chinatown Market” — By Yip Yew Chong in Singapore 🇸🇬

A visitor sits in front of the painted hairdresser, neatly completing the scene. It is one detail from Yip Yew Chong’s three-story “Chinatown Market” mural at 30 Temple Street. Local coverage records that Yip completed it in late November 2021 after 24 painting days.

💡 History Fact: Yip says this market scene is the fifth of six he conceived in 2016 for his Dreams of Chinatown project, a tribute to the neighborhood he remembers from the 1970s and ’80s. The ground floor includes a kopitiam, dried-seafood shop, hairdresser, facial services and wet market.

💡 Design Fact: Yip said the private client asked him to leave spaces where visitors could interact with the mural after seeing how the public used his earlier works. He kept those interactive spaces limited because he wanted the mural to offer more than photo opportunities.

More: Beautiful Street Art in Chinatown, Singapore

🔗 Follow Yip Yew Chong on Instagram

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Which one is your favorite?