da-eYe

The observing eye

da-eYe is the observing eye of the World of Sama. Max Dana first drew it on the walls of Paris in 1986. Whenever a graffiti caught her eye, she left da-eYe beside it, with a wink and always the same message: “I was there, I've seen you and your work.”

It was never a tag claiming a wall. It was a nod from one passer-by to another, a sign of approval left for whoever had painted there first.

Nothing was kept

da-eYe was never photographed. A graffiti is meant to disappear: painted over, washed away, buried under the next one. Max never took a picture, and that was the whole idea. None of the walls survive.

What remains are the places.

• Trocadéro

  The esplanade facing the Eiffel Tower, where Paris came to skate and meet in the 1980s.

• Montparnasse

  The slabs and passages around the tower, another gathering point of the time.

• Piscine Molitor

  The Art Deco swimming pool, closed in 1989 and left abandoned, its walls soon covered in graffiti.

• La Défense

  The RER station and the concrete underworld of the business district.

• The last wall

  Rue de Verneuil

  The wall of Serge Gainsbourg's house, covered in tributes in 1991. The last public da-eYe.

After the walls

In the early 1990s, after the wall of rue de Verneuil, da-eYe left the street. It moved into the World of Sama: into Max Dana's drawings, the pages of The Sama Gazette, and the Sama Airship, where da-eYe Jr. now travels the Many Worlds with Max Von Sama.

Mr. da-eYe is forty now. Still watching, still noticing, still there.