Autograf: New York City's Graffiti Writers

With an eye for style, Sutherland captures all of the gritty glory and glamour of the graffiti world and its warriors. Collected for the first time in Autograf: New York City’s Graffiti Writers, Sutherland presents a never-before-seen chronicle of the people and places that populate New York’s famed graf scene. Featuring old-school legends FUTURA, STAY HIGH 149, LADY PINK and DOZE, as well as new-school writers COPE 2, CLAW, KR, CYCLE, KAWS, SACER, EARSNOT, SERF, RATE, CINIK, UFO, and DSENSE, among many others, each one of the fifty-three portraits is authentically tagged by the individual writers using the same paint markers that brought them fame. Complemented by one hundred sixty landscape photographs and featuring handwritten text by legendary recluse REVS, Autograf is the only book to showcase New York City’s graffiti scene as it was created and defined by some of the most prolific artists of our time.

Publishers Weekly

Almost every artist's face in this 7-1/2" x 10-1/4" collection of 96 hot-looking four-color portraits (with a few more in b&w) is obscured in some way, reminding us that while some may see these writers as artists, many others, including the police, perceive them as criminals. It's an apt irony for an art form (one still hotly debated as such) that is all about identity and its "tags," placed in inaccessible locations and under trying circumstances. So when an artist among these leathered and t-shirted urban verbal guerillas here decides to bare his or her face (an act of bravery, or bravado?), it's a shock; each artist is more fully represented by his or her unique "autograf" (or tag) perfectly scrawled in thick glossy marker over each shot. REVS, whose huge white block letters are familiar to most New Yorkers, provides a (nicely reproduced) handwritten text on yellow legal paper, complete with misspellings, underlinings and exclamation points: "We need to be paintin 5, 10, 20 story buildings top to bottom with somethin to say... where none of these people in power... can discount your existence!" This terrific books shows its subjects in full effect (if in full stealth mode) with their canvas-New York's five boroughs-sprawled out beautifully and variously behind them, and their names. (June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

A controversial art form and provocative cultural phenomenon, graffiti has inestimably influenced our entire environment—from music and fashion to advertising, architecture, and graphic arts. Yet it is an illegal activity, which makes its practitioners wanted criminals. Motivated by a desire for self-expression and recognition, the act of marking one’s territory is done at the risk of severe consequences including fines and jail time. Graffiti writers are outlaws, unknown artists whose faces are known only to their peers. Treated as criminals by the law and dismissed as artists by the establishment, writers are perceived as either alluring anti-heroes or loathsome vandals, and usually remain anonymous to their audience. But not to photographer Peter Sutherland.