paper, pages, pavements

Back to Thames + Hudson, who have another anniversary this year. Next month they are releasing a 25th Anniversary Edition of Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper’s Subway Art (1984). No wrap-around covers on this bad-boy. It’s a larger format, revamped version with an extra 70 photos that were not included in the original edition. That’s more like it.

As I mused over this re-issue, I started to think about the personal significance of this book, and especially it’s sister publication Spraycan Art (1987),

The first Thames + Hudson book, indeed the first art book I ever bought was Spraycan Art. In 1987 I was in the second year of comprehensive school, spending my evenings recording Hip Hop and House tracks off the radio and editing together my own early mix-tapes instead of playing football or stealing cars or whatever everyone else was doing. Being into Hip Hop meant I was, by extension, interested in graffiti. I spent a few weeks visiting my local WH Smith’s and thumbing through it while I saved up enough of my paper round money to buy it. I then spent not hours, but days months and years studying it: learning the artists names and styles, copying the graffiti letters onto my school books and submitting 3D typefaces to my bemused art teacher. Subway Art was published earlier, and focussed on the New York Subway trains of the late 70′s and early 80′s, artists like Dondi White, Seen and Lady Pink. Although it only came out three years later, Spraycan Art showed that in a very short space of time graffiti as an art-form had evolved rapidly: Type was now superbly complex, characters were virtual, and the different ideas presented by Futura 2000 (abstract), Mode2 (character illustration) and Vulcan (typography) showed that Graffiti had potential to go further still. Most importantly to me at the time, Spraycan Art showed graffiti not as a localised activity on New York Subways, but now as a Global movement. The fire was rapidly spreading along with all the other Hip Hop Elements – Rapping, Breaking, DJ’ing.

In the North East of England in the 80′s, my total lack of interest in football meant there really wasn’t much else to connect to, to identify with. All the colourful graffiti letters and the determination of these vandals to ‘get over’ with that ‘by any means necessary’ attitude was of course rather inspirational to a teenage kid. I wasn’t alone. These two books opened up graffiti to the UK, and changed things forever.

Compared to now, the UK in the late 80′s was like living in a permanent communications blackout. No mobile phones. No internet. Three and a bit TV channels. No digital cameras. No pirate radio outside of London. No magazines to speak of. This was the level of pre-digital isolation we lived in, which is why opening a book like Spraycan Art in WH Smith’s was akin to finding Narnia in the back of your wardrobe.

Info-lag, the digital disease of web-users, didn’t exist then either – we had so little information on anything, we relished and worshipped whatever we could get our hands on. And the only way to see masses of graffiti in the UK in the 80′s was through these two Thames + Hudson books. They went on to be known as the most stolen books ever published, I have had to replace my own copies about three or four times over the years having loaned them out or simply misplaced them.

I didn’t become a graffiti writer myself. I didn’t really have the nerve. In retrospect I might as well have been, as my early teens were spent walking along train lines, through tunnels, alleys, parks, under bridges, everywhere, with a battered camera, seeking out graffiti pieces. Graffiti taught me to love cities. I became a juvenile urban detective – seeking out walls, spaces, spots and hidden halls of fame in derelict warehouses. I would see untouched open walls and think “yeah, perfect spot that”, see a tag written so high up on a wall I couldn’t work out how it had been done, or best of all, find a huge graffiti piece, paint still fresh, discarded cans lying on the ground. All this hunting and exploring made me feel familiar and at home in cities and to appreciate the inner geography of them. I still do this now – wandering around cities happily lost, waiting to see what turns up.

Spraycan Art was not just my bible, it served as a travel guide too. I used it to navigate my way around London. To Westbourne Park, Ladbroke Grove and to the same walls under the Westway flyover that Mode2 and the Chrome Angels had painted.

It was these explorations, using the book, that I now realise influenced many of my aspirations. I can attribute living in London largely to Spraycan Art. As I searched for graffiti (and record shops), I discovered Four Corners Playground, Camden Town, Soho, Covent Garden, Brixton, West London, North London and naturally decided this was the place for me. How could my North East market town compare? By hunting for graffiti, I discovered London, and was enraptured. At the same time, a teenage passion for graffiti art, book covers, record sleeves and club-flyers, led to a more academic appreciation of graphic design, illustration, architecture and photography. I ended up working as a DJ, working in record shops, book shops, design stores, clubs – somehow keeping my creative personal interests of hip hop and books linked to my work. In this context, my life has more of a logical narrative thread than I thought. Rather than a series of random, disparate events and momentary decisions (I’ve had plenty of those) I can see how Spraycan Art and Subway Art acted as foundational influences on all of my life experience. I now run a design store / bookshop that sells over 10,000 Thames + Hudson books a year, so perhaps I’m unconsciously paying my dues.

The most valuable thing that Graffiti and Hip Hop Culture has taught me is the DIY attitude. The idea that things can be done lo-fi, by ourselves, and we don’t have to follow the typical path. One of the other beautiful things about graffiti is it’s temporary nature, it’s creative futility. Walls are painted over again and again, memories are lost, re-written, and nothing stays around for long. The most inspiring, life affirming aspect of graffiti is the process; the act of doing, of engagement and application. Leaving a mark, taking your space, making it your own, even if just for a fleeting moment, has many positive parallels with a broader approach and attitude towards everyday life.