Henry Chalfant’s Graffiti Archives are a work of visual anthropology and one of the seminal documents of American popular culture in the late twentieth century.
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Starting out as a sculptor in New York in the 1970s, Chalfant turned to photography and film to do an in-depth study of hip-hop culture and graffiti art. One of the foremost authorities on New York subway art,and other aspects of urban youth culture, his photographs record hundreds of ephemeral, original art works that have long since vanished. His archive of over 1,500 photographs is represented exclusively by Eric Firestone Gallery, New York and East Hampton. Exhibits of his photos include the O.K. Harris Gallery and the landmark ‘New York-New Wave’ show at P.S. l, and important galleries and museums in Europe. He has co-authored the definitive account of New York graffiti art, Subway Art (Holt Rinehart Winston, N.Y. 1984) and a sequel on the art form's world-wide diffusion, Spray Can Art (Thames and Hudson Inc. London, 1987).
In 2016, his solo-exhibition at Eric Firestone Gallery “Henry Chalfant: 1980” was accompanied by a monumental catalog featuring 30 full-color plates of Chalfant's subway photographs, along with essays by cultural critic Carlo McCormick, hip hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy, famed graffiti writer and artist Lee Quinones, graffiti historian and former writer Jayson Edlin, and Henry Chalfant.
Chalfant co-produced the PBS documentary, Style Wars, the definitive documentary about Graffiti and Hip Hop culture and directed Flyin' Cut Sleeves, a documentary on South Bronx gangs, in 1993. He produced and directed Visit Palestine: Ten Days on the West Bank in 2002. His film From Mambo to Hip Hop was featured in the Latino Public Broadcasting series, Voces in 2006-2007, and won an Alma Award for Best Documentary.
Chalfant is a resident of New York City with his wife Kathleen, an actress. They have two children, David, a musician and producer, and Andromache, a set designer. He continues to make documentary films about urban popular culture.
SCULPTURE - Solo exhibitions include: A-Dieci Gallery, Padua, Italy, 1970; 14 Sculptors Gallery, New York, 1973; 55 Mercer Gallery, New York, 1978. He was a founding member of 14 Sculptors Gallery.
Group exhibitions include: Sculptors Guild, Lever House, New York, annually, 1974-1983, Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh, Pa. 1977; O.I.A. Battery Park, New York, 1977; Sculptors Guild, Bronx Botanical Gardens, New York, 1981; Elaine Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, New York, 1981-1983;
PHOTO-DOCUMENTATION - Solo exhibitions include: "Graffiti in New York", OK Harris, New York, 1980; Canton art Institute, Canton, Ohio, 1981; Riverside Studios, London, 1985; Instituto de Cultura Norteamericana, Barcelona, 1985; Addison - Ripley Gallery, Washington, D.C. 1991. Ten Years: 1977-1987 The Prosper Gallery, New York, 2002; Maharishi, London, 2002; Prosper Tokyo, 2002; Galerie Speerstra, Paris, 2003; Iguapop , Barcelona, 2004; Montana Colors, Barcelona, 2006; Cox 18, Milano, 2006; Galerie Speerstra, Paris, 2006; “Henry Chalfant”, Steven Kasher Gallery, New York, 2014. “Henry Chalfant: 1980”, Eric Firestone Gallery, New York, 2016; Speerstra Gallery, Paris, France, 2017; Paris Photo, Paris, France, 2017. Group exhibitions include: New York/New Wave, P.S.1, New York, 1981; "The Comic Art Show", Whitney Downtown, New York, 1983; "Content, a Contemporary Focus 1974-1984", Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. 1984; "Since the Harlem Renaissance, 50 Years of Afro-American
Art", Bucknell University, 1985; Groningen Museum, Groningen, The Netherlands. 1993: "Urban Mythologies", The Bronx Museum, New York, 1999. "Art of the American Century Part ll”, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 1999. "Hip Hop: A Cultural Expression", The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, Ohio; 1999; Hip Hop exhibit at the Experience Music Project, Seattle, WA, 2000; Helenbeck Gallery, “Whole in the Wall”, New York, 2009; Cartier Foundation, “Born in the Streets”, Paris, 2009. The Bronx Museum, New York, 2009. “Art in the Streets”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2014. “The Bridges of Graffiti”, Venice Biennial, 2015. “Epoxy Exhibition: Toulouse Urban Culture Festival Rose Beton", Museé des Abattoirs, Toulouse, France, 2016. “Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect”, Bronx Museum of Arts, New York, 2017. “Hip-Hop, Un Age d’Or”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Marseille, France, 2017.
BOOKS - Subway Art, Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, Thames and Hudson, London, 1984, Henry Holt, New York, 1984; Spray Can Art, Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff, Thames and Hudson, London and New York, 1987. Subway Art 25th Anniversary Edition, Thames and Hudson, London and Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2009. Training Days, Henry Chalfant and Sacha Jenkins, Thames and Hudson, London, 2015.
FILM AND VIDEO - Co-produced Style Wars, a PBS documentary film with Tony Silver, New York, 1984; produced with Rita Fecher and directed the documentary on South Bronx gangs, Flyin' Cut Sleeves, 1993. Produced and directed Visit Palestine: Ten Days on the West Bank. 2002 and directed From Mambo to Hip Hop, a documentary produced by City Lore Inc. 2006 Chalfant's current project is a documentary film, working title, "Grand Tour", based on film footage his father shot in 1931 while on a trip around the world. Chalfant is executive producer on Queer City, released in 2015, a documentary on gay life in New York in the new millennium, and Some Girls, a documentary exploring issues of identity within the Bronx Latina-American community.
SELECT PUBLIC COLLECTIONS - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA; Groninger Museum, Groningen, Netherlands; Bronx Museum, New York.
For sales inquires please contact Eric Firestone Gallery at efg@ericfirestonegallery.com
The Bronx Museum of the Arts is pleased to announce Henry Chalfant: Art Vs. Transit, 1977-1987, the first U.S. retrospective of the pioneering photographer, on view from September 25, 2019 to March 8, 2020. Recognized as one of the most significant documentarians of subway art, Chalfant’s photographs and films immortalized this ephemeral art form from its Bronx-born beginnings, helping to launch graffiti art into the international phenomenon it is today. The historic exhibition looks back at a rebellious art form launched in the midst of a tumultuous time in New York City history. Chalfant’s graffiti archives are a work of visual anthropology and one of the seminal documents of American popular culture in the late twentieth century.
Starting in the early 1970s, graffiti became a cultural movement, along with hip-hop and breakdancing, created by teenagers and young people who used the infrastructure of the city, its streets and subway cars, to circulate their tags, murals, and radical visual expressions. Through the lens of Henry Chalfant, the public will be able to see the now largely disappeared works of legendary subway writers, including Dondi, Futura, Lady Pink, Lee Quiñones, and Zephyr, and Bronx legends including Blade, Crash, DAZE, Dez, Kel, Mare, SEEN, Skeme, and T-Kid.
Chalfant developed an immediate interest in this burgeoning culture when he moved to New York in 1973, and began to explore the uptown stations where the trains ran outside on elevated tracks. By 1977, he had developed a technique of capturing exposures in rapid succession on his 35mm camera from different positions on the platform, documenting the entire train in multiple, overlapping shots.
Curated by the world renowned Spanish street artist SUSO33, Henry Chalfant: Art Vs. Transit, 1977-1987 is a long awaited homecoming that celebrates a global art movement that was born in the Bronx and upper Manhattan. Chalfant’s subway car photographs constitute the centerpiece of the exhibition—life-sized prints of train cars simulate the experience of a graffiti writer standing on the tracks and looking up. These prints display the different styles of graffiti: from “burners” to iconic full-car murals. In addition to the monumental prints, over 100 of Chalfant’s smaller photographs will also be on display.
The exhibition also includes significant and rare historical ephemera from Chalfant’s personal archives, as well as his more anthropological photographs capturing the birth of the hip hop movement. These include black book drawings and outlines by subway writers, objects from various art exhibitions and hip hop shows, as well as over 200 photographs of icons like SEEN and the Rock Steady Crew, along with lesser-known DJs at park jams in the Bronx, and graffiti artists at the writer’s bench on 149th street.
Many of these artists were mainstays at Chalfant’s SoHo studio throughout the 1980s, where they would browse through the photographer’s photo albums, comparing their works with their friends and rivals. A section of the galleries will be transformed into a recreation of Chalfant’s studio. The installation will be paired with a soundtrack of subway sounds, as well as archival videos, including All City (1983) and a video produced in 1982 by Kodak about Henry Chalfant’s technique for capturing subway art.
The exhibition is produced in consultation with Eric Firestone and Sacha Jenkins, as well as additional advisors. For purchase inquiries Eric Firestone Galley is exclusive agent.
September 28, 2018
Subway art es uno de los libros sobre arte más robados del mundo. “Íbamos a los museos solo para que nos dejaran hojearlo un rato. Al cabo de una hora, teníamos que devolverlo. Pero muchos arrancaban algunas páginas. Poco a poco, hasta que solo quedaba el esqueleto. En el Reina Sofía, se llevaron hasta las tapas”, explica el icónico artista urbano Suso33. La hoy considerada “biblia del grafiti” es obra de Henry Chalfant, fotógrafo que a mediados del siglo pasado decidió retratar las pinturas que aparecían y desaparecían en muros y vagones de tren de Nueva York. Desde ayer (y hasta el 18 de noviembre), se muestra su vasta labor de documentación en el CEART (calle de Leganés, 51) de Fuenlabrada, la primera dedicada al autor en todo el mundo.
La exposición Art is not crime incluye el citado libro, su documental Style wars —también reverenciado por la comunidad grafitera— y cientos de instantáneas, incluidas las de algunos trenes a tamaño natural para una inmersión total en los periplos fotográficos de Chalfant.
“Nací en un pequeño pueblo de Pittsburg en 1940”, cuenta el fotógrafo, “pero enseguida me mudé a Nueva York, porque era el epicentro del arte y yo me estaba formando como escultor”.
Los trayectos diarios en metro de su casa al estudio le dieron un golpe de timón a su carrera: “Algo mágico e inesperado pasaba por delante de mis ojos cada vez: obras coloristas con mensajes impactantes, improvisadas sobre paredes, o los propios vagones. Era algo realmente rupturista, y decidí plasmarlo con mi cámara de fotos. Ahí empecé a amar la fotografía como otro tipo de arte. Acabar una escultura me llevaba más de seis meses. Una instantánea es mucho más inmediata”.
Chalfant cambió el cincel por la cámara, y su obra se compone de piezas de arte que muestran otras piezas de arte. “El motivo principal siempre ha sido documentar el grafiti callejero. Pero cuido mucho la composición, el ángulo… La propia imagen se convierte en una metaobra”.
La labor de Chalfant ha servido para que muchos se tomen en serio el arte callejero. “Hay escépticos [sobre el grafiti] que, cuando se han acercado a una pintura de grafiti recogida en una de mis fotos, sacada de su contexto urbano, la han visto con otros ojos. Se abstraen del hecho de que esté en un entorno callejero, y se fijan más en la propia obra. De pronto empiezan a verla como arte, despojados de prejuicios, aunque no sea un cuadro sobre un lienzo”.
El comisario de la muestra es Suso33, que inició su carrera artística en España en los años ochenta, en gran parte, por culpa de Subway art. Por eso no oculta su entusiasmo: “Su libro y su documental nos cambió la vida a muchos artistas: nos mostró una forma de vida totalmente nueva, que adoptamos como nuestra”.
El material de Chalfant tiene un enfoque antropológico: refleja el sesgo subversivo del grafiti, siempre a caballo entre lo prohibido y lo efímero, dos conceptos que marcan el carácter del arte callejero y sus hacedores. “Muchos han tenido éxito y han terminado exponiendo en museos, pero, aunque tenga un gran valor artístico, es otra cosa”, opina Chalfant.
La muestra resalta el lado furtivo del grafiti: incluye visitas nocturnas, en el que los visitantes solo verán a la luz de sus linternas. Igual que cuando Chalfant se colaba, hace décadas, en las cocheras de Nueva York.
Born on January 2, 1940 in Sewicley, Pennsylvania, Chalfant is a renowned and acclaimed photographer and cameraman dedicated to urban culture, renowned for his graffiti and photography and films about breakdancing.
Distinguished by his knowledge of hip hop and underground culture, his photographs are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Graduated from Stanford University with a specialization in Greek, he wrote in conjunction with Martha Cooper a book on the art of graffiti in New York City, “Subway Art”, in addition to the second part of his book “SpraycanArt”. In 1983, he co-produced and carried out the research and photographic documentation of the documentary Style War. He is considered one of the top authorities of the underground art of New York.
Other works include: Flyin ‘Cut Sleeves, a documentary about gang leaders in the Bronx in the 70s; Visit Palestine: Ten Days on the West Bank, based on his visit to the Occupied Palestinian Territories in 2000, and his most recent documentary on the South Bronx: From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale. It is a chronicle of two generations that grew up in the same streets of the Bronx, NY, and both used rhythm as their instrument of rebellion; in the eyes of the generation of the 50’s, were the rhythms of Cuba; in the eyes of the children of the 70‘s were the rhythms of rap. Chalfant has indicated that his influences have been several:
“In college, my mentor was Charles Rowan Beye, the Greek scholar. Actually I did not have a mentor to influence my artistic work, but I did admire sculptors like David Smith and Eduardo Chillida. In the field of visual anthropology, the ethnographic film director Jean Rouch. “
The Centro de Arte Tomás y Valiente faces the great retrospective of Henry Chalfant, where you can enjoy, for the first time in a single exhibition, from his emblematic photographs of the trains of the 80s, his anthropological photographs, videos and installations, exceptionally curated by Suso33.
En Español
Art Is Not a Crime 1977-1987 es la primera gran retrospectiva dedicada a la labor del fotógrafo y documentalista Henry Chalfant (Estados Unidos, 1940), máximo embajador de la cultura del graffiti. La exposición nace como tributo, con la intención de poner en valor su figura y su obra, verdadera antropología visual de un movimiento artístico, el del graffiti, que ha transformado el paisaje urbano y la cultura contemporánea de las últimas décadas.
El proyecto celebra el 35 aniversario del estreno de su mítico documental Style Wars y de la edición del libro Subway Art,gracias a los cuales el mundo entero conoció la existencia del graffiti sobre vagones de metro y la cultura hip-hop, que cambiaron para siempre la forma de entender, experimentar y relacionarnos con el arte en la ciudad.
La muestra ha sido comisariada por SUSO33, uno de los escritores de graffiti más importantes de nuestro país, que lleva tres décadas experimentando con pintura de acción, muralismo, performance, instalación y videoarte. Desde hace años, mantiene una estrecha relación con Henry Chalfant, a quien considera un mentor, y en esta muestra ha querido rendirle tributo.
«El impulso que me ha llevado a organizar esta muestra es la deuda que tantos escritores de graffiti sentimos hacia Henry Chalfant, que universalizó una cultura que muchos jóvenes adoptamos como nuestra.» (SUSO33)
Para acercarse al archivo de la obra de Henry hay que valorar diferentes parámetros: el tamaño, la calidad, la cantidad y el tiempo de exposición. Esto se ha intentado transmitir optando por un diseño de exposición «inmersivo», que en la planta baja reproduce fotografías de trenes a tamaño real con distintas ambientaciones lumínicas, incluyendo un espacio sonoro, evocador de las situaciones emocionales que implica pintar graffiti; mientras que en la primera planta se ha diseñado la instalación La Mirada de Henry, una selección de casi 300 fotografías de enfoque antropológico, la mayoría inéditas (incluyendo las correspondientes a su visita a España en 1985).
El sugerente recorrido permite deambular con la mirada y con el cuerpo a públicos muy distintos. La audiencia no especializada en graffiti podrá identificar, entender y sentir, quizá por primera vez, algunas de las expresiones con las que convive cotidianamente en la calle. Y los conocedores del movimiento gozarán con los guiños, detalles y reliquias que se han preparado para la ocasión: fotografías a tamaño real de trenes míticos, material de archivo inédito, notas manuscritas, objetos y fetiches, así como de las visitas nocturnas con linternas recreando la entrada furtiva en las cocheras por la noche.
Cumpliendo un importante papel simbólico, sobre una columna griega, en una urna, podrá admirarse «la biblia del graffiti», el libro Subway Art, acompañado por la maqueta del original traída para la ocasión.
La inauguración se plantea como un tributo a Henry, aprovechando la celebración del 35 aniversario de Style Wars. Tras la proyección del documental, está prevista una charla, moderada por SUSO33, en la que contaremos con la asistencia de Henry Chalfant, además de Blade, Lee Quiñones, Mare y Crazy Legs, leyendas vivas del graffiti y del break dance, que transmitirán sus experiencias.
«Han surgido tantas cosas maravillosas desde ese primer incierto origen que consistió en dejar tu nombre escrito en un tren… El street art ha llegado muy lejos desde que el graffiti se propuso hacer renacer el arte público. Dejar tu nombre puede haber sido el deseo original, pero decir algo más que “yo estoy aquí”, expresando anhelos profundos y pasiones, creando belleza, revelando el drama de la vida, teniendo voz política, es más difícil, y todo eso es hoy posible y está teniendo lugar en todas partes.» (Henry Chalfant)
Eric Firestone Gallery is pleased to announce the release of Henry Chalfant: 1980. Chalfant’s iconic photographs of graffiti-covered subways helped launch New York City’s graffiti movement of the 1970s-80s into an international phenomenon. This book presents never-before published images and new essays from some of the most celebrated voices of the height of New York subway art. Focused on 1980, a notoriously dangerous time in the city of New York and an exceptional year for subway art, this catalogue features 30 full-color plates of Chalfant’s subway photographs and essays by cultural critic Carlo McCormick, hip hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy, famed graffiti writer and artist Lee Quiñones, graffiti historian and former writer Jayson Edlin, and Henry Chalfant.
Publisher: Eric Firestone Press
Title: Henry Chalfant: 1980
Contributors: Carlo McCormick, Fab Five Freddy, Jayson Edlin, Lee Quinones
Publication Date: August 2017
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 12 1/8 x 9 in
Pages: 82
Retail: $50
To view PDF online, click here
November 8, 2017 to April 8, 2018
Best known for his monumental cuts, holes, apertures, and excisions to the facades of derelict homes and historic buildings in New York, New Jersey, Chicago, and abroad, Gordon Matta-Clark’s work conveys a potent critique of architecture’s role vis-à-vis the capitalist system. Taking as a point of departure the pivotal series of “cuts” produced in the Bronx in the early 1970s that led to his further exploration of the city as a field of action, Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect will examine the artist’s pioneering social, relational, and activist approach. The exhibition highlights the political dialogue inherent in the artist’s artistic interventions—from his concern for the extreme plight of the homeless, his interest in direct community engagement, his belief that we should expand our lived experience of a city into its underground and other inaccessible spaces, and his commentary on development and socioeconomic stratification.
Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect will feature 8 of Henry Chalfant’s archival album pages featuring original hand cut c-prints of trains by artists including Blade, Dondi and Seen. This will be the first time these album pages have been exhibited at a museum. The exhibition includes over 100 artworks by Gordon Matta-Clark, rarely seen materials from his archive, and immersive film projections. On view beginning November 2017, Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect is organized by Antonio Sergio Bessa, Bronx Museum Director of Curatorial and Education Programs; and Jessamyn Fiore, independent curator and co-director of the Matta-Clark Estate. Following the Bronx Museum presentation, the exhibition will travel to the Jeu de Paume in Paris, France, the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn, Estonia and the Rose Art Museum, in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect exhibition and catalogue are made possible by the Henry Luce Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Blue Rider Group at Morgan Stanley, David Zwirner, Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark, and Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.
Prismes P2
Grand Palais: 3 Avenue du General Eisenhower, 75008, Paris
November 9-12, 2017
Catalogue Signing with Henry Chalfant: Thursday, November 9, 2 – 5 pm.
Eric Firestone Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in the international photography fair Paris Photo with a solo installation “Henry Chalfant: 1980.” Henry Chalfant is known as the most significant documentarian of New York City subway art of the late 1970s and 1980s. His photographs, along with the 1983 film he co-pro- duced with Tony Silver, Style Wars, and the essential text Subway Art, a 1984 book co-authored with Martha Cooper, have immortalized this ephemeral art form and helped launch New York City’s graffiti movement into an international phenomenon. Eric Firestone Gallery (New York and East Hampton) represents the photography and archive of Henry Chalfant.
“Henry Chalfant: 1980” will include 18 monumental photographs documenting graffiti-covered subway cars – 96-inch digital prints on Kodak metallic paper. In addition, 8 of the original sheets of vintage hand-cut, collaged prints will be on view. (Another group of these sheets is currently on view at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, in the exhibition “Gordon Matta Clark: Anarchitect.”) The cut and collaged prints, on photo album sheets, allow the viewer entry into Chalfant’s process. The installation will be contextualized with a selection of black books (graf- fiti writers’ sketchbooks), and outlines (writers’ design drawings) from Chalfant’s personal archive. A short video about Chalfant, produced by Kodak in 1982, will also be screened. In the video, writers look through a Chalfant album containing hundreds of collaged images of cars, referring to it as the “Book of Knowledge.”
The photographs document work by the most prominent subway writers of New York City, including SKEME, BLADE, MAD PJ, SEEN, LEE, CRASH, DONDI, NOC, and ZEPHYR (and their crews, which include The Crazy Five, United Artists, The Death Squad, and The Rolling Thunders, among others).
CATALOG SIGNING
The artist will be present for a book signing on Thursday November 9, 2-5 PM, celebrating the recent publication of Henry Chalfant: 1980. This hard-cover catalog features 30 full-color plates of Chalfant’s subway photographs, along with essays by cultural critic Carlo McCormick, hip hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy, famed graffiti writer and artist Lee Quinones, graffiti historian and former writer Jayson Edlin, and Henry Chalfant. The catalog will be available for purchase.
For more information email kate@ericfirestonegallery.com
October 8- November 7, 2017
Speerstra Gallery – Paris – 24 rue Saint-Claude / 75003 / Paris.
Henry Chalfant is an American photographer and videographer. In the late 70’s, he discovered the premises of the New York hip-hop culture and soon became one of the privileged witnesses. He is the man who revealed New York graffiti to the rest of the world by accumulating a photographic archive. Fascinated by the colors graffiti gave to the city in full social and economic chaos, he intuitively posed his objective in front of the railway tracks and took pictures of painted trains. To succeed in the heat of capturing a train quickly at full speed, he develops a fast capture technique with his 35 mm camera. His approach intrigues some artists with whom he becomes friends. Henry brings them an unfailing support and an intellectual eye on an art that disturbs. It is necessary to realize that his clichés are historical today. The impressive extent of his iconography allowed him to publish books, make films but also to bring his testimony in the private and institutional collections. For his third exhibition at Speerstra Gallery Paris, Henry Chalfant presents the exhibition “1980”. The year 1980 marks the beginning of the golden age of graffiti on New York’s metro trains. Twenty photographs in a exceptional format of trains will be exhibited on the white walls of the gallery. Many are exhibited for the first time, and show us the early works by artists such as Dondi White, Crash, Daze, Seen, Blade …
MAY 13, 2017 – JANUARY 14, 2018
69, avenue de Haifa
13008 Marseille
The Hip Hop culture opens the doors of the Museum of Contemporary Art to those in the United States, Europe and Marseille embody a global phenomenon. From the first blocks of the Bronx to the golden age of Marseille find the fever that has seized the world in three times and four movements: DJing, MCing, Graffiti & Bboying. The exhibition features a selection of Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper’s iconic photographs of the graffiti dominated New York City subway system in the 1980s.
The scenography of the exhibition favors crossings between all the disciplines that have been fertilized by this movement: music, dance, fashion, cinema, writing, graffiti, tag, photography.
For more information contact dgac-macpublics@marseille.fr.
Eric Firestone Loft | 4 Great Jones St. New York, NY #4
November 10 – January 21, 2017
Eric Firestone Loft is pleased to present Henry Chalfant: 1980, an exhibition that explores a cross-section of a momentous year in New York history through the lens of Henry Chalfant’s photography. This exhibition displays 150 of Chalfant’s photographs of graffiti-covered subway cars, many of which will be exhibited for the first time. This exhibition will also mark the exclusive representation of Henry Chalfant’s archive by Eric Firestone Gallery.
The exhibition will also feature 2 panel discussions moderated by cultural critic and curator Carlo McCormick. Panelists will include photographer Henry Chalfant, writer and TV personality Glenn O’Brien, film director Charlie Ahearn and graffiti writers Lee Quinones, CRASH, MARE, REVOLT, and SKEME.
A catalog accompanying the exhibition will feature 30 full-color plates of Chalfant’s subway photographs, along with essays by cultural critic Carlo McCormick, hip hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy, famed graffiti writer and artist Lee Quinones, graffiti historian and former writer Jayson Edlin, and Henry Chalfant.
For more information visit Eric Firestone Gallery.
June 2nd – June 27th, 2016
Toulouse, France
For its second edition, the Rose Béton festival is the new event dedicated to urban practices and cultures in Toulouse. This event offers places of expression to national and international artists, to allow the public to know the protean cultures that have imposed themselves on the streets of the Pink City for several years. Toulouse is now recognized as a laboratory in the field, especially for graffiti.
This year, Rose Béton will unveil the art of graffiti. The festival will explore the origins of New York, through the work of pioneers of the movement, and will expose contemporary urban artists globally recognized. The 2016 edition of Rose Béton is an international project that wants to dedicate the city of Toulouse as a real platform for urban artistic creation.”Rose Béton” settles in the Château d’Eau for a month and presents photographs of MARTHA COOPER and HENRY CHALFANT . Figures of urban art, their photographs document the emergence of the movement in the 80s in the United States.
In relation to this work are presented for the first time, the photographs of the young SYLVAIN LARGOT , who accompanies the new generations of underground urban exploration.
Henry Chalfant’s photographs and documentary films on young urban culture, make him a recognized specialist. His photographs of ephemeral paintings in the New Subway Yorkers have immortalized, frozen, moments and colors dedicated to disappear. He co-wrote with Martha Cooper the cult narrative of New York graffiti art “Subway Art”.
Featuring a brand new HD transfer from the original 16mm print. Over 70 minutes of never before seen extras including: The Outtakes and The B-Boy Showcase, made from unreleased footage, remastered with the help of donations from Kickstarter, also in HD. Style Wars: In The Cutting Room, a behind the scene look at the the editing process.
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This limited edition of the classic film Style Wars features 30 minutes of “never-before-released” outtakes, new interviews and “where are they now” footage. also featured in this edition are new commentary tracks, “Destroy all Lines” and the Aesop Rock music video “No Jumper Cables”.
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Style Wars is the original Hip Hop documentary. Directed by Tony Silver and produced by Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant, it was awarded the Grand Prize for Documentaries at the 1984 Sundance Film Festival. Winning high praise from the local graffiti writing community for its authenticity, STYLE WARS is widely regarded as the indispensable document of NYC Street culture of the early ’80s.
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Completed in 1993 Flyin’ Cut Sleeves presents alternating portrayals, from the past and the present, of former street gang presidents in the Bronx: Benjy Melendez, The Ghetto Brothers, Ben Buxton, The Savage Nomads, Nelly “China” Velez, The Savage Nomad Girls, Felipe “Blackie” Mercado, The Savage Sculls, and Lorine Padilla, Blackie’s wife.
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The film presents a panoramic view of the music that blossomed in the Latino community of the South Bronx from the late 1940’s, when Mambo burst onto the New York cultural scene, through the birth of Hip Hop in the 1970s.
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