Customer Reviews

Bathroom Graffiti

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

 

 

Mark Ferem is onto a strong concept. For several years he has been photographing and writing about the graffiti found in restrooms across America, Mexico, and Canada, finding that these tiny repositories of space isolate potential writers, giving them momentary privacy to pen their thoughts and perceptions and flailings and political strider and sexual leanings. The result of this preoccupation is a book that is not only a well designed photography survey of latrines ('latrinalia') but it is also a sensitive study of the needs of those who elect to decorate the walls during those private moments of waiting for nature to take its course.

Amir H. Fallah introduces the book with an essay in which lines such as these arise: 'Usually the scrawls and doodles in the bathrooms don't reveal anything profound or life altering. They are simply messages and images written and drawn anonymously in the safety of the bathroom stall'...'They capture moments in time where individuals left their marks for the rest of us to see, binding us all together by the simple fact that we all have to go to the bathroom.'

Ferem then introduces his project with some personal wisdom as to why people write what they write and then proceeds to divide his book into sections: Introduction (The Wall) 'Latrinalists believe that there is no ascension without dissension'; Men's Room 'If Pro is Progress, what is Con?'; Women's Room; Uni-Sex; Politikal Asylum (sic); Apokalupsis Now (sic); and Random Firing Neurons. Of course each of these chapters are groundings for some superb photographs, taken in all manner of light and from angles that would challenge the finest fine art photographer. Close-ups of lines of wisdom or folly, images of very well drawn graffiti, and color-smeared filthy walls that bespeak of layer upon layer of thoughts and emotional outlets - all provide laughs and thoughts and serve as a nidus for philosophizing.

In the end Mark Ferem invites us all to add to his ongoing project of latrinalia. 'Bathroom graffiti elevates the common moment and its intention...The spirit of latrinalia may not be in the words and images but in the consciousness in which it is written.' It makes for an intriguing book, a photographic odyssey that is produced and designed in the highest quality as an art book. And it makes us curious...Grady Harp, January 07

This is actually quite a dedicated attempt to illustrate well an aspect of graffiti and public culture. "Bathroom graffiti" is certainly not too extensive or comprehensive but it does try to have an structured approach to the different manifestations of graffiti in restrooms, which unfortunately is quite uncommon for the topic, being typically either derriding or superficial, but that is not the case here. With a a handful of references to investigate the different categories, it supports the efforts to look into different typologies, settings, types of toilets, and how those might affect the graffiti displayed. Again, not too extensive an account, which they promise to be working on for a follow up volume, but it is an interesting balance between essay and visual reference.

... Men's room, women's room, uni-sex bathrooms, political messages, religious-like messages and just some examples the author finds significant in such art form. The book is quite well organized with arguments that come in a short essay at the beginning of each section that the photographs follow.

I like the author's sensibility to women's literary creativity from the part where he chose and examined a number of examples that demonstrate some very interesting feminine experience we normally do not hear but anonymously. They are about negative experience and difficulties of women. It's almost forbidden to voice out how weak one feels sometimes because Americanism is a lot of the time about suppressing the reality of weakness and despise whoever that're suffering, ironically, if one is a woman. But when nobody is watching, at least, at that very moment of writing the graffiti, the truth is revealed and the emotions are very genuine. Just from the phenomenon of such feminine writing we can identify how discriminatory our culture is against women that seek a medium to put their negative experience in words. That is a good section.

I also like the author's viewpoint on "dialogue" here and there throughout the entire book. It's so true that by reading what other people write in the bathrooms, we not only see what has been said anonymously once in time, but also a continuous exchange of private experience with the other unknown people, making the act of graffiti itself interrelated among the writers and readers. The idea of dialogue certainly challenges us to evaluate how effective the more addressed communications outside of the bathrooms in our daily lives actually are.

Mark Ferem in this book documents all those bathroom bits of wisdom and insanity that you've never wanted to forget. It's as insightful as it is entertaining. great bathroom reading.

They say that an image is worth more than one thousand words. That's the case with each of the pictures taken by Mark Ferem in this book; images that are composed mostly by words. Words that don't even need to be read because they talk to you loud and clear. Sometimes like a whisper, sometimes like a scream.

Wrapped in an innovative and appealing design, the pictures unfold as you pass the pages and it seems like you are looking at a collection of everyday archeological pieces that the author has looked for, found and preserved carefully.

All the messages are incredible. Personally, some made me laugh almost unstoppably for their wittiness. Others made me think of the deepest, philosophical questions in life. You have to see them by yourself.

Finally, I loved the way Ferem writes his own words. His conclusions on what he saw and is presenting to us in this book come from abstraction but go to the point. They don't intend to pretend or confuse with academic artifices. Instead, they synthesize the experience you get after observing these outstanding individual messages, and then he puts them into a large sociological, psychological and artistic context about this type of art or subgenre. It comes from him so easily because it comes from his sincere passion.

To summarize it: anyone will see that the person who did this book is a brilliant artist himself.

pretty cool book, i 've thought that some the stuff written on bathrooms should be recorded and lo and behold, someone has. some brillant thoughts have been captured on these walls, not to mention, what women write on their walls, its insane. great and very original. a collectors piece for sure.

Horrible. It just didn't do it for me. Maybe it's just my definition of "Graffiti", I assumed it was going to be different tags n such like how the cover suggests, but all you get are pissed off people who are angry at their fathers writing on the walls... granted that is what a public bathroom consists of but no need to make a book of it. Thank God Amazon accepts returns, I can't get this there fast enough.