192 pages Edited by Josh MacPhee 20 x 20,3 cm Language: English Paperback Publisher: Soft Skull Press 2004
Published in July 2004, at the exact moment the stencil went from anonymous street practice to global phenomenon, and one of the very first books to treat it seriously. Close to a thousand photographs from around the world sit alongside artist profiles and an essay-driven history that puts the medium in its political context: anti-gentrification struggles in New York and San Francisco, the Argentine uprising of 2001, movement graphics, and the long line of printmaking the street stencil belongs to. Work by Banksy, Swoon, John Fekner, Seth Tobocman, Shepard Fairey, Stain, Heart 101, BSAS Stencil, Melbourne's Meek and hundreds of others, from Buenos Aires and Barcelona to Melbourne, Prague, San Francisco and Chicago. An essay by Russell Howze of Stencil Archive is included.
MacPhee was no observer: an artist, founder of Justseeds and later of Interference Archive, he came to the book from a series of self-published zines (Pound the Pavement) begun in 2000, and it shows in the tone — a book made from inside the practice, not about it. The back section carries a full cut-and-spray manual with tips from the artists and twenty perforated cardstock templates meant to be torn out and used, which is precisely why intact copies are increasingly hard to come by. Five print runs, over 10,000 copies, and out of print since the mid-2010s
