Subway Art: A Conversation with Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant

15 April 2009

Saturday@Phillips
Auction: Saturday 25 April 2009 Noon
Phillips de Pury & Co. 450 West 15 Street New York NY
Viewing 21 - 25 April

Subway Art, 25th Anniversary Edition, by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant

After 25 years in print and more than a half million copies sold, Chronicle Books releases a new deluxe edition of the acclaimed Subway Art this month with 70 additional photographs by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant. Martha and Henry were recently interviewed by Alex Smith, Urban Art specialist at Phillips de Pury & Co.

Alex Smith: Your photos of the graffiti writers and painted subway cars (many of which are published in Subway Art) remain as some of the greatest visual records of the legendary New York City graffiti movement of the 70s and 80s. I think it’s fair to say that as a direct result of these images and their widespread exposure over the past 25 years, graffiti culture and subway art has become well known and influential across the globe.

Looking back on those early days and the rise of the movement into an international phenomenon, what is it about graffiti and hip-hop culture that has made it such a mainstay of popular culture?

Martha Cooper: I see graffiti as a youth art movement. Kids broke away from existing adult culture and invented hip hop, an urban youth culture including music, dance and art that was relevant to their own lives. Apparently there was a common denominator that made this culture internationally appealing.

Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper

Henry Chalfant: I think that what attracted me in the first place is shared by others. As a sculptor, I enjoyed the vitality and playfulness of the forms and imagery. The mischief element can be appealing, especially to adolescents and other people who may have experienced alienation. Just as early rock and roll shocked white society with its rebelliousness and sensuality, graffiti and Hip Hop subverted the established order. Graffiti had to be brought under control because, in the immortal words of Nathan Glazer, it was a “symbol that society had lost control”.

Photo by Martha Cooper

Urban youth everywhere saw it as a new voice and a way of overcoming the oppression and invisibility they experienced in mass society. Many people around the world who embraced the art when they were kids have told me that when they saw young people like themselves painting graffiti, or breaking, it came as a revelation. They saw people just like themselves, and they felt that they, too, could achieve something.

AS: After more than a decade of subway art as a defining cultural trademark of New York City, by 1989 Mayor Koch’s “war on graffiti” had basically put an end to the group of young artists’ steady and unlawful production of subway art by adding new trains coated with resistant polyurethane, increasing security and enforcing stricter laws.

As a member of the community, what was your initial response to the abrupt end of subway art in many ways a unique American art form not unlike blues, jazz and rap. Secondly, now that the subway cars and platforms are (mostly) free of graffiti, what kind of feelings does it inspire in you?

Photos by Henry chalfant

MC: After Subway Art was published in 1984, I stopped photographing graffiti and concentrated on making a living as a professional photographer. Graffiti photography had consumed my life for years and I needed to support myself. I wasn’t really paying close attention to whether trains were still being painted or not since I no longer had the time to run out and try to photograph them. When I realized that the era of painted trains in New York City was probably over, I felt relieved that the inordinate amount of time that I’d spent to document the trains had turned out to have been a worthwhile pursuit.

I don’t spend a lot of time feeling nostalgic over the bygone painted trains. I’m more interested in keeping an eye out for what’s happening on the street now. I enjoy watching things change over time.

HC: When subway art in New York came to its abrupt end it had been dying for years. Even though many great pieces were painted up until the demise of painting on trains, it was long past that you could easily see a lot of good art unspoiled by the buff or by cross-out wars. The public appreciation of the art that took place within the graffiti community in the form of benching, watching the trains go by and commenting with appreciation or scorn, had been an essential element in the movement.

Photography helped usher in the new world, a much larger international community and wider circle of admirers, which is good, but looking at pictures on the internet lacks the excitement of the trains as a medium. So, I miss the old days, but the loss of the painted trains is offset by the surge of creativity worldwide, both by people who began writing graffiti, and other street artists who took the idea of painting in public space in many exciting directions.

AS: Much of the beauty and power of street art for me is not only its demonstration of technical ability, stealth, spontaneity, adventure but also how ephemeral and vulnerable this so-called aggressive art form is to the changing elements. The work could be up one moment and gone the next—whether it has been scrubbed over, painted on or moved out of sight. There is a natural and organic quality to street art as an ongoing process that inherently reflects the passing of time.

As photographers whose medium is based on capturing light in split seconds, do you think that you were naturally drawn to photographing graffiti as a kindred art form?

MC: No, I see photography as a method to preserve the ephemeral. The photos last much longer than the art. When I began to shoot graffiti, I had a longstanding interest in ethnography and art and a former career in an anthropology museum. I was drawn to graffiti while working on a personal project documenting adventurous, creative play activities. Graffiti was an excellent example. I felt graffiti, especially on a moving train, was an ideal subject for still photography. The photos enabled people to study an art that was impossible to study in situ. In addition, because the art was ephemeral, my photographs were a form of historic preservation.

Henry Chalfant, Lee, Futura, Dondi, 2004, screenprint, signed, dated and numbered
Part of Lot 404

HC: I was always excited by the ephemeral nature of graffiti art, which I believe contributed to the extremely rapid development of new ideas and forms. Graffiti is in some ways a performance as opposed to studio painting. Your work, however carefully planned has to be executed in a moment and in difficult circumstances and your success or failure is very public. It’s exciting to watch an artist take risks in public.

For me, photography, which I took up to document the trains, was an activity more like hunting. It required patience, learning about the “habits” of the trains, and luck. You had to be ready for the critical moment when the train arrived because you might not get another chance.

AS: Do you have any particular preference for the context of how your works are viewed as Fine Art photography, historical artifact, or visual anthropology?

MC: I think of myself as a documentary photographer, not an artist. I make an effort to take aesthetically pleasing photos that are well framed and well lit, but literal subject matter always trumps interesting light or dramatic angles. In my photos, I want detailed subject matter to be clearly visible.

AS: In this same regard, how do you think that your backgrounds (Henry, as a sculptor; Martha, as an anthropologist / photo journalist) have informed your approach to photography?

MC: I spent a year studying anthropology in graduate school. One of my professors stressed that it was important to look at art and artifacts in the context of the culture that created them. This was my approach to graffiti.

Photo by Martha Cooper

HC: As a sculptor, I was accustomed to using photographs to create a panoramic view for site proposals. I would take pictures around 180 degrees and splice them together in a diorama and place the sculpture model in it. So that’s how I approached the problem presented by taking pictures of a long object a short distance away when I first saw a beautiful piece parked in the center track between stations on the El (elevated train), and I had to walk out on the catwalk to get the shot. After that I realized that I could more safely stand on the platform and wait for the trains to come to me.

I think that for me photography was a tool to capture and display the work of art on the train and to document the phenomenon. I have since learned that what I did was a form of visual anthropology.

AS: I’ve read in other interviews that it was originally quite a challenge for you to find a publisher in the US for Subway Art, that American publishers were reluctant to endorse the subject. It took a publisher in London to have the courage to produce the book. Perhaps this attitude is changing but there still seems to generally be a greater mainstream acceptance and interest in American graffiti and street art in countries other than the US. For instance, I know there is great deal of interest in your photos along with some of the founding fathers of graffiti such as Crash, Daze, Seen, Futura 2000 in the United Kingdom, France and Brazil.

Photo by Martha Cooper

What is your perspective on how graffiti is viewed in different countries?

MC: While I was photographing, I assumed that I was documenting a phenomenon particular to a place and time (New York City in the early ‘80’s). I never imagined the worldwide spread of New York style graffiti. To my surprise, my work has found more of an audience abroad than in the U.S. One of the hopes in bringing out our big, beautiful new 25th anniversary edition of Subway Art is that people who dismissed graffiti as vandalism will take a fresh look at both the art and our photos.

LOT 307, Daze, Parachute Drop, 1997

HC: Historically I believe that the US has been the biggest and most influential cradle of popular culture. From the global impact of blues and jazz throughout the 20th century to rock and roll, abstract expressionism, pop art in the post war period and finally with rap and graffiti and breaking up to the present day. Americans seem to enjoy some new thing for awhile and then move on. Europeans embrace and emulate these cultural icons, study them and often preserve them when Americans have lost interest. Most of the collectors of graffiti-based art are in Europe, while with a few notable exceptions like the Brooklyn Museum, no major institutions of art in America have collected or displayed graffiti art. Like Richard Wright, James Baldwin and many great American jazz musicians before them, a number of American graffiti artists have lived in Europe for years, some even going to countries like Brazil.

AS: I’ve read that many of the old subway cars were all dropped into the ocean as a way to help build an artificial barrier reef along the east coast. I wonder if any of them were saved for museums such as the Smithsonian. Do you know if there are any remaining painted cars in existence?

HC: At least one transit worker has bought a subway car with pieces on it. I saw it a number of years ago in the 6 yard. It was once possible to buy subway cars going out of service if you also paid the costs of removing asbestos and other toxic materials. I don’t think any museum had the foresight to buy one.

LOT 309 , Crash, John Matos, Diptych: Looking In, Looking Out, 1993

AS: I am curious to get your thoughts on how the street art movement has developed, if there are particular artists that you find interesting, and if you see a common thread among them?

MC: I love to look at street art around the city as I’m going here and there. It’s fun to see art come and go especially when it’s in an unusual medium or put up in an unusual place. I’m familiar with the work of many street artists and enjoy recognizing their styles when I come across them. I feel that graffiti writers paved the way for the appropriation of public space for art, thus giving artists a level playing field for displaying their work.

Photos by Henry Chalfant

HC: It’s not a stretch to link the old New York train painting movement with the more conscious efforts of later street artists to subvert the tyranny of commercial imagery that we are bombarded with. The graffiti artists sought to put up an alternative form of self-advertisement entirely outside the world of money, but trying just as hard as the ad men to get your attention. I remember seeing a piece by a graffiti writer in the seventies that said, “Think Hutch”.

I love the work of many street artists who use irony and humor to comment upon the commercial tyranny in which we live. Shepard Fairey puts a dark edge on his Warhol-like appropriation of iconic images with his scary and ominous “OBEY” message. A lot of paintings from the world of street art work just as well in a gallery, but it’s in the street where it has the most widespread impact and where it competes directly with the imagery of the mainstream.

Photo by Henry Chalfant

AS: Does graffiti lose any of its interest and relevance for you as it becomes more commercial?

MC: Personally I’m more interested in art on the street than art in galleries. Illegally placed art has an extra edge and part of the thrill for me is spotting a fresh piece. On the other hand, I believe artists should be able to make a living with their art and I’m happy to see that many artists who began on the streets are now doing quite well selling their work.

AS: One of the most famous and prolific street artists working today is Shepard Fairey also known as OBEY but perhaps best known as the man behind the Barack Obama presidential campaign posters Progress and Hope. He recently made headlines after he was arrested at the opening of his retrospective at the ICA in Boston for outstanding warrants in the city related to vandalism. He was supposed to be DJ’ing his opening party but instead spent the night in jail. It was clear that the law wanted to make a statement by raining on his parade at this grand hour.

Does it surprise you to see an artist like Fairey become such a national icon connected to the presidential election? Also, does such a move by the police remind you at all of the old days? I know a similar tactic has been used in the past by law enforcement to catch graffiti artists at their gallery openings…

Lot 359, Shepard Fairey, Untitled (Arab Woman), 2007

MC: Using Shepard’s iconic image of Obama was a brilliant move by the Democratic election committee, one that perfectly meshed with OBEY’s well developed guerilla marketing techniques. The fact that the image was embraced by youths, many of whom had never previously voted was a testament to the wide appeal of art perceived to be cool. The Boston cops behaved badly. What in the world were they thinking?? Arresting Shepard as he was arriving at his big opening at ICA was just plain stupid, and a terrible public relations move for law enforcement.

On the other hand, graffiti and street artists need a few arrests for credibility. Their art thrives on illegality. The logical time to arrest Shepard would have been while he was pasting a poster, not en route to his grand opening.

Subway Artist, Seen, a collection of photos from Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant

LOT 308, Seen (Richard Mirando), Untitled (Skulls), 1998

I’m not an impartial observer, but I am a big fan of Shepard Fairey’s work. I credit his Andre the Giant has a Posse campaign for getting the present day street art movement rolling. Shepard has been accused of becoming a sell out because of his commercial work. I recently had a show at his gallery, Subliminal Projects , in LA, we also made a collaborative poster, and his OBEY clothing line produced street wear with my photos. I was perfectly happy to “sell out”.

HC: I was not surprised to see Fairey posters in support of Obama, who is a person in touch with contemporary American life and culture and whose campaign reflected it by this choice of poster. I’m also glad the poster read Progress and Hope and not Obey.

As to the police, as Mr. Bumble said, “the law is a ass—a idiot….”. It reminds me very much of the old days. Inept police work in the seventies and eighties made breaking the law, the so-called “quality of life offenses”, fun, and this fueled the activity of writing graffiti for years.

AS: Last question: if you had a chance to go back in time to those early days, is there anything in particular that you’d want to capture more extensively or a message that you’d want to convey to the original graffiti writers?

Photo by Martha Cooper

MC: I wish I had looked harder for some of the earliest writers, especially women.

The only message I would like to convey to writers is my heartfelt thanks for allowing me into their lives and for helping me take the photos that we’re still talking about today.

HC: I wish that in addition to using still photography to document graffiti that I had also used a movie camera. The moving image, with audio, captures beautifully the whole kinetic experience of viewing graffiti on trains. By the time we began to film trains to make Style Wars in 1982, there were very few freshly painted trains running without cross-outs.

To the original graffiti writers I would like to express my thanks. I benefited from their work and I owe to them my career change from studio artist to documentary photographer and filmmaker, for me a good solution to the old question, whether to do art or activism. I’m grateful that they welcomed me as an outsider, that they left me phone messages telling me which line to photograph on a given day, helping me document the trains much more thoroughly than I could have otherwise done. And I’m grateful because documenting their art has given me a passport with access to worlds beyond the ordinary.