216 pages Photographs by Sascha Blasche 24.6 x 17.5 cm Language: English and German Hardback Publisher: Aura Sacra Fames and Hitzerot 2025
In a city like Berlin, where graffiti tags appear daily only to be buffed just as quickly, the chance to encounter older markings that have resisted time, weather, and erasure feels almost miraculous.SURVIVORS – VOL.I inaugurates a new book series dedicated entirely to these rare remnants: tags from the 1990s that have endured against the odds, still visible across the German capital decades later.
Art historian Sascha Blasche began documenting graffiti in the mid-2000s, focusing largely on the western districts of his hometown. Even then, he noticed how tags from the 1990s stood apart: not only in their placement, under bridges, on electric boxes, or in hidden schoolyards, but also in their material execution. Many were made with resilient automotive enamel rather than standard spray paint, giving them a toughness that allowed them to outlast newer works. Their distinct letterforms and bold handstyles soon became recognizable as a quintessentially Berlin 90s aesthetic.
This first hardcover volume compiles nearly 1,200 tags, photographed between 2005 and 2010, and presented in clean alphabetical order. Alongside well-known names like LEVEL, AKUT, BAS2, AAM, ZEAL, RASTA, or OXBOE, the book highlights lesser-documented writers such as TAXIE, BRAIN, LEMONE, ZICKE (†), AUE, DEY, COMET, GUS, ZERO, SCENE, HEMA, DRUG, ASCY, and many more. Across 216 pages, Blasche creates both an archive and a celebration, reviving forgotten signatures and inscribing them back into Berlin’s namewriting history. With subtle design details, like replacing page numbers with the first letter of the tags shown, SURVIVORS – VOL.I is more than a collection: it is a tribute to resilience, memory, and the enduring mark of a generation.
