144 pages Photos by Paul Stenzel 30 x 20 cm Language: English, German Softcover Publisher: Seltmann and Söhne 2017
A collective photo book that turns away from the finished piece to document the act itself. Initiated and edited by Paul Stenzel, it brings together nine international photographers — Phil America, MJay, Peter Stelzig, Kevin Schulzbus, Riky Kiwy, Peter White, Dopplhand, RDJ and Miserable Face, working across America, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands — around a single subject: illegal train writing and the atmosphere surrounding it. Where most graffiti books catalogue results, this one stays with the process — the night, the layup, the run, the adrenaline of the moment before and after the panel.
Each photographer's series is accompanied by personal texts, so the book reads as much as a set of first-person statements as a photographic record. The result is an unusually candid, insider view of an anonymous underground, and one of the more considered contemporary contributions to the photography of trainwriting — closer to a shared authorial statement than a survey.
