Lady pink..
A sketch of Lady Pink in Subway art... My post about Beatboxes got me thinking about what you needed back in 1984-5 to be fresh, you had to have Trainers or Sneakers as there called in the states. I like Puma dallas, Addias Trim trabs, And one of the freshest pairs of footwear I seen back then was a pair of Nike Omega.
They looked like these-1980-84, They change hands for £300-£700 these days.
They rocked.
A Nike wind cheater, A little like this..
Fat laces, Bomber Jackers, Goose jackets (they where a bit later).
And of cause your Bible,
Subway Art.
This book has changed so many lives, Thanks to the artists that made this book so fresh even Today it still has a huge impact on so many people. I really don't think how life would of turned out if it wasn't for this book, I've made the best mates you could have due to this book, I'd go and say its one of the most important books of modern art in the last 50 years. No other art book as had the same impact on young people all over the world, ever!!!!!!
Its finally proving how big this book has been on the art scene as Graffiti and other genres of street art becomes more important.
I found an interview by the authors from
http://arrestedmotion.com/
Interviews: Henry Chalfant & Martha Cooper – “Subway Art: 25th Anniversary”
AM had the pleasure of interviewing
Henry Chalfant and
Martha Cooper as they celebrated the launch of their amazing book “
Subway Art: 25th Anniversary” at
Black Rat Press (
covered).
 Despite an initial print run of just a few thousand back in 1984,
“Subway Art” has become a true phenomenon with countless reprints that
have inspired thousands of artists and fans around the world. Check out
the interview and get a chance to win a signed copy of “Subway Art:
25th Anniversary” after the jump.
Arrested Motion (AM): How and when did each of you get involved in documenting graffiti and working together on “Subway Art”?
Henry Chalfant (HC): Some time around 1976 I started to take
pictures of graffiti on the trains. I’d be living in New York since ’73
and saw them developing and thought they were amazing. I wasn’t a
photographer – I was an sculptor – but I had a camera and I started
taking sequence shots of sections of the train and splicing them
together and it worked well for me to get a good, close up image of the
art. It interested me at a time when I was bored – I was getting stir
crazy in my studio and I loved the aesthetics of this new style of
calligraphy. It was really amazing and erupting from below and pieces
wouldn’t last for long getting buffed or weathered or written over. I
was hoping one day I’d meet somebody who did graffiti but it took years –
they were very cagey. I remember I met a guy who said he knew a writer
called Ree so I called Ree up and he said he’d meet me at a certain
time at a subway station but of course he didn’t. I only met him 25
years later and he said he didn’t trust me – after all I was twice their
age, caucasian and not the type of person they’re used to dealing
unless a social worker or police. But by ’79 I had a basic collection
together so when I did finally meet the writers I had all this stuff
that I could show them and they were accepting at that point.
AM: Was the wider world paying attention at that time?
HC: There were murmurs of interest from the outside world even in
’73 when there was the Razor Gallery show in Soho by UGA – United
Graffiti Artists – who were a youth collective collected together the
graffiti artists of the time and put on the show. There was an article
in New York magazine and a book by John Naar and Mervyn Kurlansky and
Norman Mailer wrote the introduction but after the show there was
nothing for years. Then in ’79 Lee did a spectacular handball court in
the lower east side and it was noticed by an art dealer in Italy and he
took Lee and a guy called Fred who arranged things to Rome and they did a
show so there was beginning to be more interest around that time. Then
I had a show in 1980 at the OK Harris Gallery on West Broadway of 20 of
my photos for a week and that really clicked in both with writers who
really embraced it as well as art collectors.
Martha Cooper (MC): And that’s where we met as I’d heard about the
show and came and introduced myself. I was working as a photojournalist
and unlike Henry I didn’t register the art of graffiti. I didn’t read
it and couldn’t understand it but I was doing a personal documentary
project on the lower East Side photographing kids doing creative things –
pictures of kids building go-karts, jumping off fire escapes and those
sort of things. And one day, one of the boys I’d photographed before
with a pigeon coop said to me why don’t you take pictures of graffiti
and showed me his little sketch book – his name was HE3 and that was
when I first heard about the use of nicknames. Immediately I also saw
he was a designer and when I expressed interest he said that he knew a
‘King’. So. unlike Henry, I managed to meet writers straight away and
me and HE3 drove to East New York and knocked on what turned out to be
Dondi’s door. When I introduced myself he said “Oh – Martha Cooper” and
opened his more lavish black book and inside the cover he had one of
my photos he had clipped out of the New York Post so he knew me which
was great.! So I met him in 1978 and interviewed him a while later and
started looking at the trains which I hadn’t really noticed before
though there really weren’t many out there at any one time that were in a
fresh state and hadn’t been buffed. I was fascinated at the lengths
the writers would go to to do a piece – stealing the paint, designing
the piece, preparing the layout, getting into the yard and all of that.
I also really wanted to capture the backgrounds as well as the trains
so Henry and I worked separately and had different interests but our
styles really complimented each other. We’d both tried to get books
published but nothing was happening – so we pooled resources and our
styles really worked together and we’d find some initial interest from
the odd editor but it wouldn’t go further – particularly in New York
especially when you said the word ‘graffiti’. So we went the Frankfurt
book fair and met Thames and Hudson in 82 and they were immediately
interested and it eventually got published in the UK and the US edition
became the foreign edition – which doesn’t mean much to anyone except us
as the royalties on the foreign edition are much less than on the
original edition though we’re not complaining! Also if people really
want to know about the history of graffiti then the first edition of
Subway Art is more like a primer with information about graffiti culture
while the Anniversary Edition is more an art photography book that
really boosts the images – some of which were taken by the writers such
as Dondi and Blade themselves. The writers love to be able to see the
new details in the larger format. We’re still in touch with a lot of
them and some we’ve never even met before have been turning up to the
more recent events so that’s fun.
AM: How was the initial publication received?
MC: Well the first thing that happened was the the covers fell off so they trashed the original edition.
HC: So that meant delay and we were worried somebody else was going
to do something similar though not as good and get published before us.
So it was a slow process and there was no launch or anything though we
were happy to get it published.
AM: When did you feel like the book had really taken off?
MC: For me, only recently when somebody put me on the internet and I
looked at the artcrimes website or one of the early Zines. I was out
the scene for about 20 years though have jumped right back in!
HC: I got inklings of it in 85 because I started getting mail from
california, europe, australia and they send a little photo saying “Thank
you for your book – its inspired us”.
AM: How do you feel about graffiti moving from the street to the galleries and ultimately to collector’s homes?
MC: For me, I’m not interested in photographing that but I think
artists should be able to make money from the art and I’m really happy
for them if they can make a living as an artist although I’ve not really
followed it personally.
HC: Me too, its never as dynamic or exciting as the original culture
when it was on the trains and it was a live phenomenom. The trains
were this arterial thing that became a medium that really created
communities. If you think of the gang era which preceded this era
graffiti just crossed all that creating a community of graffiti writers.
And now its the internet, magazine, forum and all over with people
painting from city to city which is exciting but I don’t feel a
compulsion to document it – they’re taking good pictures themselves.
AM: Where has life taken you since “Subway Art”?
MC: I’ve done a lot of work that has nothing to do with graffiti and
have been working as a freelance photographer on various projects. I
also work for a folklore organisation documenting all kinds of community
things in New York city – you can check out its website at
www.citylore.org. I feel like i should have done more about the women
involved in graffiti at the time and to rectify that I did a book called
We B Girlz which isn’t graffiti but includes some artists such as
Asia-1 and I regret that I didn’t try harder to find and feature them as
it was predominantly the male writers that I met. There’s also a
graffiti artist called 2 Fly who doesn’t do much illegal graffiti but I
try to support her work and in the present generation there are way more
women involved. I’ve also been documenting street stickers – rather
than looking at the big production pieces I’ve been looking at the more
subversive hand drawn stickers you can see in my book Going Postal. I’m
currently doing another street project photographing in Baltimore – my
home town which is going through a difficult drug infested time but very
interesting. Its about street culture and last weekend there was a
huge community father’s day block party – unnanounced, nothing for sale
and not official but the whole block was there with 4 or 5 generations
out on the street and I really enjoy photographing that sort of stuff.
HC: Since that time there was the film Style Wars – Tony Silver was
the film maker and I played the role of the anthropologist introducing
him to the culture. It was my first exposure to film and I wanted to do
more after that. So I began to do video as video was coming in by the
mid ’80s so I did a couple of hip hop related things – one of them is
called All City and then in the mid to late eighties I met Rita Fecher
who had a real amazing archive relating to teenage gangs from the 70s –
newspaper articles, writings, photos and things like that so Rita and I
made a documentary called Flyin’ Cut Sleeves with some old footage Rita
had shot in the early 70s. Then I tried to produce some Puerto Rican
rappers which was a fiasco but took up about 2 years of my time! The
most successful thing I’ve done as a director was a project called From
Mambo to Hip Hop which came out about 3 years ago which is about latin
music and the Bronx and dance. And I’m trying to finish all kinds of
loose ends including digitising all my train photos – to date there are
around 600. I want to get them all out once and for all on a DVD and
I’ve been interviewing dozens of graffiti writers from that era about
their memories and how they got into it and the whole crew structure –
alliances and enemies – and how that era impacted on who they are now.
So that will be a DVD set with all this material on it.
AM: Martha, how have you found recent collaborations with artists such as Shephard Fairey?
MC: I worked with Shepard Fairey on two prints and I like what he
did – I was flattered he asked and I had a show in his gallery so that
was good. And Chris Stain also contacted me and asked would it be
alright to do some stencils using my work and I said sure – he really
changes things and I like what he did a lot. Its fun to see this street
art scene developing and I enjoy being a part of it and the idea –
that’s central to graffiti – of appropriating public space for art is
great.
“Subway Art: 25th Anniversary”
