I - Inspiration

I own a book called Subway Art written by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant it basically documents everything about the urban subcultures of New York City and it plays a massive part in the inspiration of a lot of my graffiti art work because it was the time I came into contact with the origins of graffiti and really took it all in. What I love about this book is the way all the work in this book is nicely photographed in a way that you can see all the work head on and its framed really well. You can see what sort of train the work has been created on, the surroundings of the piece and the aftermath such as left over food wrappings and empty spray cans. I think these little things add to the work because it tells you that slight bit more about the artist's lifestyle. I like how all the photos in this book were actually taken at the time the work was done it makes it all feel so much more real almost like you were there when this was happening. Another one of my favourite parts about this book is that it has a lot of the artists views on parts of this street art era such as when the buffer was introduced and it says about how upsetting it was to have your artwork washed off trains in a matter of minutes considering it took them hours to create.