A great photo, take the time to look at it carefully - built up from two layers, plus a third, hidden, layer. What's happening here?
First, is the graffiti itself, painted across a steel roller shutter and the wall of what looks like a worn-out industrial building, could be in Manchester or East London. It’s colourful, chaotic, doubtless the work of multiple street artists over time, the symbols go back a long way.
You’ve got the Union Jack defaced, the CND peace symbol, hearts, a bright green frog emoticon, the number 86.
The slashed Union Jack means "I reject" or "I'm frustrated". The hearts soften the tone, hearts signify universal love, love wins, follow your heart. The frog adds a touch of irony - don't be so serious. "86" is street slang for "get rid of". "26" bottom right is where a signature goes the artist or crew collective or maybe the year of the latest contribution.
All late-20th-century Britain, 1977 “God Save the Queen, the fascist regime”, Ban the Bomb, Corbyn-era symbolism. The more things change, the more they rhyme.
Second, is the little girl. She's not painting. She's not reacting dramatically. She's just standing there, slightly detached - she could be licking an ice cream, but she isn't. Maybe she looks passive, but she isn't neutral.
The question we have to ask ourselves is: what is she understanding from the kaleidoscope of symbols? Is this just background noise to her? Is it liberating? Does it even register as "art" or is it just chaos without meaning?
To put a child in front of symbols is not going to be something passive for the child, children are learning, absorbing a narrative, she is learning about the country she's growing up in.
And then there’s the third element.This is the one that isn't there: the grandfather, not there in the photo because he is looking at it. “How things have changed”, he exclaims. That’s the emotional frame around the whole photograph. So this isn’t just about street art, in actual fact it’s about continuity. About whether the transmission between generations is smooth, or whether there’s likely to be rupture (an end-of-empire theme beloved of this blog). If you, granddad, see broken symbols, she might see colour and expression. How things have changed, yea - in the same symbols from your youth and hers, you see decline and erosion and frustration at the lack of progress, but she may see freedom and liberation and hope.
Put all this together and here is a really powerful image. A child placed deliberately in front of a frazzle of political and emotional graffiti, symbols and history. Big State narratives being overwritten by youth culture. Authority challenged, icons defaced, messages all mixed and broken up. To one eye it looks anarchic, post-industrial, "no more heroes anymore"; to another, it looks creative, playful and pluralistic - everyone gets a chance to chip in.
So this isn't so much a mural about political change, it's a mural about inheritance. Legacy, transmission, inheritance. What grandparents are anxious be transmitted through their offspring to their grandchildren, and what of that their grandchildren are sufficiently interested to understand and want for their own futures.
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