Expressions of emotion followed the January 2020 helicopter crash in Calabasas, California, that claimed the lives of 9 people, including NBA star Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna. In addition to tributes from athletes, artists, actors, and public figures, localized memorials sprang up as Angelenos, in general, and fans of the Los Angeles Lakers, in particular, gathered to remember Bryant’s life and legacy. One particular form of remembrance of this global sports star was in the form of public murals.
I conducted fieldwork in May 2022 to support a cross-sectional documentation of 248 exterior murals across Los Angeles County that commemorate Kobe Bryant’s life and legacy.1 In this photo essay, I share images from the documentation project and evaluate these murals’ spatial, locational, and thematic patterns. I conclude by considering what these murals can tell us about collective memory and cultural landscapes.
One of the most distinctive and diverse forms of public art in Los Angeles is the muralism that marks hundreds of walls in its urban landscape. Contemporary muralism in Los Angeles has several historic antecedents, including Mexican traditions of mural painting, state-supported public art initiatives, and civil rights-era public art. Mural themes in Los Angeles uniquely reflect the demographics and dynamics of this fragmented metropolis. For example, murals in the barrio of East Los Angeles present Mexican origins, community struggles, and religion (Salim 2017), while murals in the beach town of Venice have a hyper-local focus on landmarks, nature and environment, and people (including celebrities), as well as depictions of scenes from Venice, Italy (Salim 2019). The main types of murals present in city-sponsored utility box murals in the suburban city of Glendale are murals that depict people (including representations that reflect the city’s diverse demographics), murals that represent nature (e.g., birds, dogs, animals, and plants), historic and place-based murals, and murals with inspirational text (Gonzales and Salim 2024).2 Murals are inherently ephemeral—outdoors and subject to fading, unguarded so subject to random changes, alterations, and vandalism, lost as the wall is torn down to make way for a new structure, or erased as the wall takes on a new subject. Relevance and respect are major actors that allow murals to persist in a dynamic urban landscape. The long-term survival of murals in Los Angeles tends to be connected (to a degree) to the ways that they reflect the values and visions of the local neighborhoods and communities within which they are situated. As such, Los Angeles’ murals are an excellent way to understand collective memory at the neighborhood scale. Conversely, universal themes that are represented across the city or county are rare.
As the fieldwork map illustrates, the Kobe Bryant murals are found in a variety of neighborhoods across Los Angeles County.3 Paralleling patterns of sports fandom, these murals cut across boundaries of race and ethnicity in Los Angeles, and instead are found in a widespread distribution that spans across many demographic and economic characteristics. Readers familiar with Los Angeles will recognize the prominent street names on which some of these murals are found: Melrose, Broadway, Sunset, Venice, La Brea, Whittier, Crenshaw, Hollywood, and Olympic, to name a few. The unprecedented spatial range of these particular murals, and the way that they transcend the boundaries of other public art in Los Angeles (including murals that reflect race and ethnicity as they closely connect to their neighborhood and community contexts), illustrate how Kobe Bryant, who won five NBA championships during his career with the Lakers, was a larger-than-life figure with a unique place in Los Angeles’ collective memory. Murals depicting Kobe Bryant are not confined to smaller or segregated communities, as is the case with many other public memorials in the US (Dwyer and Alderman 2008). And they have wider reach than much visual symbolization of sports. These murals are in public spaces and visible year-round, as opposed to the seasonality associated with some expressions of sports team fandom.
The vast majority of these murals are highly visible. There are two factors that impact an individual mural’s visibility, in general. The first factor is the mural’s placement and location. The murals documented here were most commonly located on commercial buildings and alongside public streets (Figure 1 and 2); this mirrors broad trends found in previous surveys of murals in Los Angeles (Salim 2017; Salim 2019). The Kobe Bryant murals are found on a diverse array of buildings that defies neat categorization, including restaurants, gas stations, gyms, nail salons, car washes, barbershops, and cannabis dispensaries. Tellingly, most of these murals exist in everyday spaces. But not all murals are found on commercial buildings on public streets: some can be seen in alleyways (Figure 3) and adjacent to parking lots (Figure 4), and, on rare occasions, on community spaces (Figure 5) and in residential areas (Figure 6).
A mural’s (vertical and horizontal) scale is the second factor affecting its visibility. One of the largest murals documented during this project was approximately 180 feet long, too long to be captured adequately in a single photograph (Figure 7). Another monumental work is comprised of 20 smaller pieces that cover three sides of a building in Downtown Los Angeles, totaling approximately 100 feet. Several of the smaller Kobe Bryant murals documented during this project had been painted on electrical utility boxes (n=14, 5.6%, Figure 8).4 The smallest mural that was documented was a figure, painted on a wall, that was approximately 1 foot wide and 2 feet tall – a subtle memorial. However, the majority of murals noted during this fieldwork were between these two size extremes; the typical mural was between 10-15 feet tall and varied in length depending on the structure it was painted on.
Most murals (n=102, 41.1%) focus on Kobe Bryant without any references to others. Many murals in this group represent iconic images from his sports career and are often based on images taken by professional photographers. An advantage of this transmission from a photograph to a mural is that the resulting mural is instantly recognizable to the audience. An interesting side effect of this is that some murals in different parts of the county, by different artists, reproduce the same image; Figures 9 and 10 provide one example.5 This independent reproduction across a large metropolitan region is a unique outcome within public art, and it highlights the ways that iconic images are created and circulated and the ways in which celebrities enter (and persist in) the public imagination.
It is fitting, given his career in Los Angeles, that the vast majority of murals depict Kobe Bryant as a Los Angeles Laker - his jersey numbers (8 and 24) are featured prominently (Figure 11), as are moments that represent his sporting triumphs and his characteristics, such as athleticism and determination. Similarly, murals refer to Kobe Bryant’s Black Mamba nickname (these references include the snake (Figure 12), his Black Mamba logo, or the word “Mamba”). Place-based connections are also visible in murals that reference the Great Western Forum and the Staples Center, the venues where the Lakers played.
Given that Kobe Bryant’s career with the Lakers spanned 20 seasons, it is unsurprising that the vast majority of murals show him at different ages and moments in his Los Angeles sporting career (Figures 13 and 14). Kobe Bryant’s career beyond Los Angeles is reflected in a very small number of instances - he is depicted as a high school basketball player at Lower Merion (Pennsylvania) High School and as a member of the US men’s national basketball team. Interestingly, three murals in different parts of the county by different artists use the same “time-lapse” effect, applied to a basketball dunk, to show Kobe Bryant over the course of his career (Figure 15).
A large grouping of murals (n=83, 33.5%) broadened the focus to also include Kobe Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna. Murals that show Gianna, point out her #2 jersey, or note her nickname (“Lil Mambacita”) (Figures 16 and 17) poignantly reflect the grief associated with the helicopter crash and speak to some of the emotions shared by the artists and their audiences.
The sudden, tragic nature of Kobe Bryant’s death is captured by murals that include angel wings, halos, clouds, and textual references (Figures 18 and 19). Gianna gets similar treatment in a subset within this group of such murals. Unsurprisingly, the other victims of the helicopter crash are only mentioned in a small number of murals.
One theme that differentiates memorial murals from other murals in Los Angeles is the inclusion of elements that speak to legacies. Murals reflect Kobe Bryant’s legacies in two main ways: by showing his accomplishments and sharing quotes from him. Images of championship trophies (Figures 3 and 14) and rings celebrate Kobe Bryant’s on-court accomplishments; a mural in Hollywood highlights his 2018 Oscar award for “Dear Basketball,” an animated short film in which he reflects on his career.6 Quotes are another way that muralists share the voice of the person being memorialized (Figures 4, 5, 13, and 20).
Although the vast majority of the murals surveyed (n=236, 95.2%) were in excellent condition, public art is inherently ephemeral. Of the dataset of 248 murals, 4 (1.6%) were defaced in a minor way, 5 (2%) were moderately defaced, and 3 (1.2%) were defaced in a major way (Figure 21). This rate of damage is extremely low, compared to other studies of public art in Los Angeles (Salim 2017, Salim 2019), and can be monitored over time. The reasons for the low rate of damage are unclear, but could be attributed to the murals’ relatively young age, or due to a showing of respect. Ephemerality is also noted when Kobe Bryant murals have been removed from the landscape – the fieldwork identified 23 Kobe Bryant murals that no longer existed in 2022. Indeed, at the time of this writing (September 2023), the mural in Figure 18 is threatened with destruction.
Conversely, many murals have a digital presence. The inclusion of Instagram handles allows audiences to connect with public art and artists in new ways, and a digital image of a mural on social media can circulate far beyond the mural’s immediate vicinity, allowing murals to reach new publics. Similarly, a mural that has been removed from the city’s physical landscape can continue to exist online, as its digital traces persist after the material artwork has ceased to exist in the city.
Some of the murals place Kobe Bryant in symbolic conversation with other Los Angeles-area sports figures and celebrities (contemporary and historic, dead and alive.) Figure 22 depicts Kobe Bryant and Los Angeles Dodger icon Jackie Robinson. Figure 23 shows, from left to right: rapper Snoop Dogg, rapper Warren G., rapper Nate Dogg, Kobe Bryant, actor and wrestler Tommy Deebo “Tiny” Lister, Jr., rapper Eazy E., rapper Nipsey Hussle, and Delvin Kelley) (Figures 22 and 23). When these include individuals who have passed away, the mural’s memorial functions are amplified. One notable group of murals (n=16, 6.5%) portrays Kobe Bryant and prominent Los Angeles rapper Nipsey Hussle, whose murder in Los Angeles in March 2019 also prompted public mourning. These portrayals act as a double memorial (Figure 24) that illustrates intersections between sports and popular culture. Similarly, several murals included Kobe Bryant as one element within a larger mural.
Beyond the obvious connections of the Lakers (through the use of colors and the team’s name, jersey, and venues), and relationships to other people connected to Los Angeles, several muralists include local place names and elements of Los Angeles’ built environment, adding local dimensions and explicitly connecting Kobe Bryant to Los Angeles (Figures 4, 9, 10, and 25).
The larger dataset from which this photo essay is derived provides a rich source of information about murals, a particular element in Los Angeles’ cultural landscape, at a specific moment in time. The Kobe Bryant murals are fascinatingly diverse. They were installed in a spontaneous bottom-up process rather than being sponsored by a top-down initiative. They vary in terms of size, location, placement, and have been executed by a range of artists, using a variety of materials and artistic techniques.7
An examination of the geography of these murals (their spatial and locational patterns) and each mural’s visibility, reveals that they contribute to a specific sense of place that connects Los Angeles County in a way that few other types of artwork do – for some residents in places as different as Koreatown, Venice, East Los Angeles, Watts, Downtown Los Angeles, and the San Fernando Valley, these works of art are part of their everyday local landscapes. Based on Kobe Bryant’s status as a figure instantly recognizable at a regional scale,8 the murals connect to a regional identity. As such, they contribute to Los Angeles County’s cultural landscape in a way that few other types of public art can.
Focusing on the murals’ thematic patterns provides clues about the processes that underwrite this form of public art, particularly with respect to the ways in which they reflect (and reshape) collective memory. Many murals in this photo essay indicate the various ways that a 20-year in one city’s glaring spotlight is commemorated. Some murals speak to how iconic images circulate and recirculate in the public’s imagination. Other murals reveal the emotional reactions to the loss of young children. In implicit and explicit ways, all of the murals embody collective loss and mourning. This aligns with scholarship in other contexts that illustrates how public art can be used to approach difficult topics (Hannum and Rhodes II 2018). Finally, some murals connect Kobe Bryant with (larger) human and physical communities through the inclusion of local figures and elements.
As we consider these murals as a whole, their spatiality and iconography can shed new light on Los Angeles’ cultural and urban landscapes. As they simultaneously draw out (and develop) a collective memory, these murals create a specific sense of place, one with unique regional dimensions. And by creating this sense of place, these murals mark Los Angeles’ cultural and urban landscapes in novel ways. Although this photo essay is specific to this case study, the underlying processes are not – the outcomes can be compared to case studies of public art in other contexts, particularly when it emerges from spontaneous social movements (Chacko 2021). Studying these highly visible and symbolically rich pieces of public art, and the processes that bring them into being, expands our understandings of how artists (and their audiences) mark collective memory in the city, inscribe place identity, and create new cultural landscapes.
1 Other notes about methodology: A further criteria for inclusion in this study was that the mural had to be visible from the public street. Authoritative data on mural creation dates is not uniformly available, precluding the development of a chronological time series of mural creation. All murals were field surveyed, photographed, and mapped; the resulting inventory was subjected to content analysis.
2 To provide a sense of the scale of the neighborhood-based studies referenced above: The East Los Angeles study examined 179 murals, the Venice study examined 353 murals, and the Glendale study examined 144 murals.
3 The map is intended to allow the viewer to zoom in and explore patterns of mural density and spatial distribution; it does not include detailed information about each mural.
4 These utility boxes allow small-scale public art to enter residential areas.
5 These two murals are based on a now-iconic photograph taken by Los Angeles Times photographer Wally Skalij in Game 2 of the 2007-2008 Western Conference series against the Denver Nuggets.
6 Kobe Bryant retired in 2016.
7 23 of the 25 murals in this photo essay can be connected with specific artists. These 23 murals represent the work of 20 different artists.
8 Kobe Bryant was a national and international sports figure. For example, his white Lakers jersey is on display as part of the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American Culture and History in Washington, DC. This global prominence has a connection to murals, as some Los Angeles-area Kobe Bryant murals are now tourist destinations.
Support from a sabbatical leave (California State University, Fullerton) and departmental travel funding (Department of Geography & the Environment) facilitated the fieldwork process. Mike Asner’s crowd-sourced mapping provided a starting point for the fieldwork. VV, IS, and AS provided fieldwork assistance and research support. The comments of the two anonymous reviewers strengthened the article and are greatly appreciated. The space, consideration, and comments offered by editor Dr. Deborah Popper are very gratefully acknowledged.