Product Description

A controversial art form and provocative cultural phenomenon, graffiti has inestimably influenced our entire environment - from music and fashion to advertising, architecture, and graphic arts. Yet it is an illegal activity, which makes its practitioners wanted criminals. Motivated by a desire for self-expression and recognition, the act of marking one¹s territory is done at the risk of severe consequences including fines and jail time. Graffiti writers are outlaws, unknown artists whose faces are known only to their peers. Treated as criminals by the law and dismissed as artists by the establishment, writers are perceived as either alluring anti-heroes or loathsome vandals, and usually remain anonymous to their audience. But not to photographer Peter Sutherland. With an eye for style, Sutherland captures all of the gritty glory and glamour of the graffiti world and its warriors. Collected for the first time in Autograf: New York City¹s Graffiti Writers, Sutherland presents a never-before-seen chronicle of the people and places that populate New York¹s famed graff scene. Featuring old-school legends FUTURA, STAY HIGH 149, LADY PINK and DOZE, as well as COPE 2, KAWS, CYCLE, CLAW, VFR, KR, EARSNOT, SERF, RATE, SACER, UFO, and DSENSE, among many others, each one of the fifty-three portraits is authentically tagged by the individual writers using the same paint markers that brought them fame. Complemented by over fifty landscape photographs and featuring handwritten text by legendary recluse REVS, Autograf is the only book to showcase New York City¹s graffiti scene as it was created and defined by some of the most prolific artists of our time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #363211 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 112 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Almost every artist's face in this 71/2"×101/4" collection of 96 hot-looking four-color portraits (with a few more in b&w) is obscured in some way, reminding us that while some may see these writers as artists, many others, including the police, perceive them as criminals. It's an apt irony for an art form (one still hotly debated as such) that is all about identity and its "tags," placed in inaccessible locations and under trying circumstances. So when an artist among these leathered and t-shirted urban verbal guerillas here decides to bare his or her face (an act of bravery, or bravado?), it's a shock; each artist is more fully represented by his or her unique "autograf" (or tag) perfectly scrawled in thick glossy marker over each shot. REVS, whose huge white block letters are familiar to most New Yorkers, provides a (nicely reproduced) handwritten text on yellow legal paper, complete with misspellings, underlinings and exclamation points: "We need to be paintin 5, 10, 20 story buildings top to bottom with somethin to say... where none of these people in power... can discount your existence!" This terrific books shows its subjects in full effect (if in full stealth mode) with their canvas—New York's five boroughs—sprawled out beautifully and variously behind them, and their names.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Peter Sutherland is a filmmaker and photographer who was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1976 and raised in Colorado. A move to NYC in 1998 prompted his first feature documentary, Pedal, a film about NYC bike messengers that is currently airing on the Sundance Channel. Sutherland also worked as director of photography on Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator, a documentary about Gator, a famous skateboarder who was convicted of murder in 1991. Directed by Helen Stickler, Stoked premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, and was released theatrically by Palm Pictures in August 2003. Sutherland is a contributing photographer to magazines including Vibe, Tokion, Nylon, paper, and XLR8R, and has done commercial photographic work for Nike and Vice Records. He has shown his work at the Rivington Arms gallery and at 255 Elizabeth Space, both in New York. Sutherland lives and works in NYC.

Customer Reviews

instant classic
This is an instant classic... up there with the darkest and grittiest of NYC documentation. When first flipping through this book, other classics such as Back in the Days came to mind, as well as the feature length documentaries Pedal and Dark Days, which all sucessively set out to document some of NY's most influential subcultures. By themselves Peter's photographs are amazing, but add to that the ingenious concept of having the artists actually sign the photo and you have more than a photograph, you have a valid piece of contemporary art. I'd say you could easily add this to the list of sucessful documentaries, plus, having this book on your coffee table won't hurt your street cred! Highest recommendation.

tagging and bombing
graffiti gets a bad rap for polluting our visual landscape throughout the world. who are these so-called criminals? city officials spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year trying to remove this art when they could better spend that money on educating our youth. what motivates these individuals to bomb public surfaces, yet there is no face to the tag?

peter sutherland reveals the mysteries behind today's NYC tag-and-bomb scene by photographing the sources. the portraits are well crafted in composition, lighting, and context. on top of that, each artist has tagged his/her own portraits. sutherland has taken an original idea and elevated photography to a higher art form by revealing the diverse personalities, demeanor and emotions of these artists. definitely a book that everyone should add to their collections!

alright
Basically an ok book for the ny scene. Not much in the way of content though. Not much pieces, mostly local bombing and pics of some of the writers with their eyes blurred.