Balloon Fight (Flight)

In Balloon Fight (Flight), Steve Lazarides captures one of the most enduring images in Banksy’s oeuvre: the Girl with Balloon. Shot on the streets, Lazarides frames the iconic motif in a moment, a suited man strides past, while the anti-war slogan “Fight the Fighters Not Their Wars”  is graffitied in the background.

Lazarides, Banksy’s then original photographer, agent and close collaborator, was uniquely positioned to document such fleeting encounters. His lens not only recorded the physical artwork, but the social theatre around it, passersby, city textures, the ephemerality of the street.

Balloon Fight (Flight) exemplifies Lazarides’s role as custodian of Banksy’s legacy, offering collectors the chance to own not just an image of Banksy’s art, but a document of the world in which it lived. With much of Banksy’s early street art now lost, Balloon Fight (Flight) stands as a rare record, an artwork in its own right, that distills the urgency, wit, and political edge of a cultural phenomenon at its ascent.