Customer Reviews

Autograf: New York City's Graffiti Writers

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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!

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.

peter sutherland came up with a great idea: take portraits of nyc's best graf artists and then have them tag over their photos! genius! I always wondered what these people look like and now I get a glimpse. glimpse is a fairly appropriate word here because in many of the pics the subjects have obscured their faces in a variety of creative ways. in my opinion this is what takes the project from great to outstanding!! genius...sheer genius!!
check this book out if you get a chance. and if you see peter around nyc give him a big hug and thank him for his creativity...he's making the world better every day.

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.

sutherland delivers a comprehensive collection of the faces behind new york city's world famous grafitti culture. the portraits are taken with an eye for style and provide a rare look at a subculture that is generally inaccessible to outsiders. highly recommended.

As New Yorkers, we always have graffiti as part of our landscape. This book is an excellent view into the underground art that paints our walls. It's very cool to see who the source for these are. This book tells you an urban secret. What an awesome idea for a book! The photos are amazing!

My advice to anyone who orders this book is to cut your fingernails before Mr. Delivery man drops it on your doorstep. I nearly ripped the thing to shreds as I excitedly flipped page after page after page taking in one amazing image after another. Sutherland's photos are incredible enough, but the fact that he applied some sort of coating over the artists' tags makes it appear as if they personally signed every copy before it was shipped off for delivery. Nice touch!

I can't wait to pack Sutherland's photos in my mind the next time I visit New York City.

I love the idea of the book~ A "blackbook" that's alive with photos of the writers....but truth be told, this book is nothing less than a quickly assembled capital venture...Many of the writers in this book are questionably "all city" and about a third of them ARE'NT EVEN FROM NEW YORK~!... It was obviously put together by someone who looked no further than 2 DEGREES OF SEPARATION to find the artisits for the book. It is neither a fair representation of NYC graffiti nor an artisitic feature book... You will see handstyles ("tags") of the featured artists, but there is little more than a handful of actual WORK from writers.... It is an interesting take on graffiti documentation and I suppose a nice addition to an already well established collection of such books... but you'll flip through it once and never pick it up again.

The past few decades have seen a plethora of literature and documentation substantiating the phenomena of street culture sourced originally in New York City and now transgressed to the global environment. Sutherland's eye is key and his awareness for communicating the anonymity, rebellion, and bravado of his subjects is highly commendable, making his subjects apparent enigmas of a incredibly resonant post-modern motif. Capturing the personalities, entrails, and highly charismatic aura of these writers is complete and I highly reccomend this book as not only a resource for those interested in graf, but for archiving an important chapter of guliani and 9/11-era contemporary art.

PLEASE... to all of the people who are saying that the artists in this book are not good and their art is garbage... you need to look into the history of graffiti to see your facts. Sure some of the artists are not THAT popular, but if you TRUELY knew anything about the history of our beloved art form, you would be so amazed by this book. Lady Pink is probably one of the most influential graffiti artists in the world. These cats are the artists that truely made graffiti what it is today. FUTURA, DOZE, Lady PINk, Kaws, and stay high 149 were TRUE GRAFFITI ARTISTS. No matter how talented the so called "graffiti kings" in NYC are in the present day, they will never bring a revolution like those artists did. Many of the so called "kings" of our generations have yet to even paint a train! How can you be so disrespectful to your elders. Thats like being a fine artist and insulting dali, because he was not to your taste. Please get some respect...



...and by the way... this book rules! So next time you want a graffiti book to your liking... make sure you dont get an informational book like this that tells you about the past graffiti writers who are the masters, get one about some lame cats who tag theyr name on the side of an abandoned building without even making a statement... hmmf