FROM copying sketches and photos for friends, till shiny coffee table books pilling up in the stores, the documentation of graffiti has come a long way. How it all started…
The first attempts to document graffiti were made in 1972. Mervyn Kurlansky, a partner in the London-based international design company Pentagram, proposed a collaboration with photographer Jon Naar, famous for his pictures of Andy Warhol. The idea was that they would make a book on a new phenomenon in New York; graffiti art.

In the 1960s there was also writing on the walls, but the writers, local kids and gangs, only did it in their own neighborhoods. In the early seventies the territorial function began to fade. In The New York Times of 21 July 1971 stood an interview with Taki 183 (the numerals referred to the Harlem street he lived in) who left his name all over town. The favorite canvas of this seventeen-year-old was the subway.

That was also the place where Jon Naar and Mervyn Kurlansky 1972 started their project. On the first day out they met a couple of kids at Harlem’s 155th station. These youngsters were writers and happy to show them around. For the next two years Butler 1, Blood 167, Junior 161 and Cay 161 acted as guides for Naar and Kurlansky.

The result was published in 1974. In the US the book was called ‘The Faith of Graffiti’ (Praeger Publishers), in the UK it had the name ‘Watching My Name Go By’ (Mathews Miller Dunbar). It was also published in France and the Netherlands. Famous novelist Norman Mailer wrote a sixteen-page introduction for the book.

The work pictured in the book is a variety between kids scribbling and tags of some of the pioneers of graffiti. There are a couple of photo’s of StayHigh 149 – yeah he’s the one with the Saint stick figure and the joint attached to the crosspiece of the letter H – and there is even a top-to-bottom train by him in the book. The young guides must be responsible for pointing out of the early masters like StayHigh 149. They are also in the book, immortalized in a classic photo. On a stairway of the subway you see Butler 1 and his buddy’s, holding up pieces of paper with their tags written on it.

The Faith of Graffiti / Watching My Name Go By is long out of print and old copies do more than 100 dollar. But with the recent appreciation of ‘the oldskool’, photographer Jon Naar realized that he had the first steps of modern graffiti locked up in his archive. In 2007 Birth of Graffiti (Prestel) was released, bringing the early seventies writers back to life.

Butler 1 and his buddy writers at Harlem’s 155th station in 1973.

In the ten years that follow graffiti keeps developing, but no significant publication is brought out. Until 1984. In that year the well-known publishing house Thames & Hudson presents Subway Art, a praiseful collection of painted subway cars in New York City. Three years later there is a follow up: Spraycan Art. This book handles graffiti in a much broader way. The pieces are on walls and other American city’s and even Europe and Australia are visited. Those two books influenced a generation of writers. Some even call it the ‘graffiti bible’.

Subway Art was made by photographers Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper. They both worked separately, searching the subway for ‘fresh burners’. In the course of taking these pictures, the photographers became friends with the graffiti writers. In fact, the writers introduced them to each other. Chalfant and Cooper met and joined forces. They completed each other because the different approach of working.

Henry Chalfant , at the time a sculptor, focused his attention on the paintings, isolating them from their environment. A subway car is twenty meters long and it cannot be captured broadside with a normal 50mm lens when standing on the platform. Chalfant couldn’t photograph in an angle, otherwise the details of the father end of the piece were not visible. But he found a way. Chalfant managed to take, with quick footwork, several pictures of one piece. He was not on the (above-ground) platform where the train arrived, but on the other one and so not bothered by passengers getting of. In the darkroom he shuffled the separated photos of one piece together.

Martha Cooper was a photojournalist and that was noticeable in her work. It was not just the pieces, but also its surroundings. She photographed the writers working the trains in the yards and took shots of the subway cars in their urban environment. She spent days on rooftops and abandoned buildings in the South Bronx, waiting for hours for a painted train to pass by.

The two together made a perfect team. The pictures of Chalfant were just an objective registration of the graffiti in New York in the late seventies, early eighties. Every detail of the pieces are visible and it gives a good look of the quality of the work that these anonymous artists made. Cooper put her photos in a time frame by adding the surroundings. You see the grime buildings of the projects in contrast with the colorful trains. And her portraits of the writers gave the artists a face

A fold out of a Chalfant picture from a piece by Dondi.

The book gave an introduction in graffiti. It began with a brief history of the art form. But it did also something far more important. Their contacts with the writers, those often tip them off when a new piece was sprayed, made it possible to document the graffiti slang. The vocabulary of the New York writers became, partly as a result of the book, the standard for the rest of the world. Terms like ’throw-up’ (a name painted quickly with one layer of paint and an outline) and ‘toy’ (inexperienced or incompetent writer) are still used today.

But not all the people of New York liked ‘the giant mobile comic strip’ that was rolling over the tracks Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Mayor Koch declared a war against graffiti on the subway cars. Yards were secured and subway cars cleaned. The lines of the New York were gradually getting clean. But there were enough walls in the city filled with pieces to made a sequel. And why stay in NYC? Published in 1987, the book Spraycan Art looked at the five boroughs and beyond.

The introduction of Spraycan Art explains that the broadened view has a reason. Graffiti had spread al over the world. Galleries discovered the hero’s of the subway and some writers even had expositions in museums. Still a little less than half of the book is filled with work out of New York. The five boroughs each had their own chapter. Then work from graffiti scenes from cities like Los Angeles and Chicago followed. But also writers from the other side of the Atlantic got their share. Trailblazers like Seen en Lee were also featured in Subway Art, but other artist that would put play a big role in the developing of graffiti were also in the spotlight. And they weren’t born in the Bronx.

One of the biggest talents of Europe was the French artist Mode 2. His work is the finest in Spraycan Art. Pieces by Mode 2 in the book are made in London and Paris and his character holding a spraycan made the cover of the book. (Worth mentioning is that in two English writers that are in the book made a name on a different level. Next to each other you see 3D and Goldie posing for their pieces. 3D started Massive Attack and Goldie became a famous drum ‘n bass producer.)

Henry Chalfant was again on the project, but this time with another partner; James Prigoff. He was an expert in community murals and had photographed one of the major documentations of mural art in the United States. Martha Cooper’s role was minimal; there are only six photos of her in the book. But one of them became an icon for the b-boy era. Cooper made in 1983 a picture of the big ‘Wild Style’ piece by Zephyr and Revolt on a wall of a handball court. And in front of the graffiti is stand the Rock Steady Crew. The photo is a classic.

A true classic.

There were other publications that documented graffiti in that time, like Graffiti Art by Allan Schwartzman. But the books didn’t make the impact like Watching My Name Go By, Subway Art and Spraycan Art. In the meanwhile the writers did their own documentation. Each person involved in graffiti made pictures of his work or work that he (or she…) admired. They were collected in ‘piece books’ or ‘black books’. In there were also sketches from yourself or writers.

Pieces could be on a wall or train for a long period, but most of the time they were quickly cleaned or painted over by other writers. So a picture of the work was the only thing that lasted. Piece books of a famous writer were filled with legendary work that was no longer there. And when there was a writers meeting, a lot of people were flipping through that book.

Some even made photocopies of the pages and handed them out among friends. And they copied the pages too. All that those lose pages need to become a primitive magazine were some staples. The first underground graffiti magazines were not much more than that, just a couple of hazy, black and white photo’s bundled together.

The power to publish, amateurishly as it was, gave graffiti scenes all around the world the opportunity to spread the work of local heroes. And preserve a works of art that were bound to be cleaned up or painted over by other writers…

Very funny in the right magazine is an advertisement of a graffiti tour to Paris.
The bus tour must have led a snail trail of tags and pieces behind itself.

Copied sketches from Mode 2 and Delta.