172 pages Edited by Jon Naar Photograph(s) by Jon Naar 20 x 24 cm Language: English Paperback Publisher: Prestel 2007
In the spring of 1973, photographer Jon Naar moved through New York to capture a visual eruption still in its infancy: the signatures, tags and hand-drawn lettering spreading across subway cars, tenement façades and parked trucks. That campaign first produced The Faith of Graffiti (1974) — the earliest book-length study of New York graffiti, prefaced by Norman Mailer and long held as a founding reference by the writers who followed.
The Birth of Graffiti extends that gesture. More than one hundred and thirty previously unpublished images from the same body of work are brought together here alongside a selection of the most striking photographs of 1974. Reproduced full-frame, with faithful attention to the original colour, they restore the texture of a vanished New York — the city before the piece and the mural, when a name written by hand, often trailed by its zip code, was enough to exist. Sacha Jenkins situates the corpus within the longer history of a youth culture born in the street and since grown into a driving force in art, fashion and music.
Not reprinted in nearly two decades, the title has grown scarce on the secondary market, where it now trades above its original price. A reference volume for any library devoted to the origins of writing.
