Bathroom Graffiti (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

If you’ve ever used a public restroom, chances are you’ve read some bathroom graffiti, or at least noticed it. Often bawdy, funny and smart, sometimes illegible, it is a ubiquitous means of expression found across the United States and all over the world. Do the private, intimate moments in the bathroom provide people the opportunity to freely express themselves, leaving little nuggets of truth and insight for the next user? If you ask Mark Ferem, the answer is yes. Ferem has spent the past several years collecting and compiling photographs of exceptional bathroom graffiti, making for the perfect bathroom book. Divided up into thematic sections like "Men’s Rooms," "Women’s Rooms," "Art" and "Politics," unlike other graffiti books, the examples in Bathroom Graffiti are not so much about graffiti as an art form as much as they are about graffiti as the result of personal expression, which will never find its way into galleries or ad campaigns.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Mark Batty Publisher (September 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0977282740
• ISBN-13: 978-0977282746
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #764,073 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Latrinalia: Learning More About Our Private Selves, January 26, 2007

By	Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Have to disagree..., May 12, 2008

By	J. Ryan - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

4.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile Approach to the Topic, October 3, 2008

By	Daniel Lobo (Washington, DC More often than not.) - See all my reviews

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.