HISTORY! - Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant Subway Art Interviews Back In The Day!

I don't know how I have missed this, I have not seen it before but this contemporary short film is absolutely fascinating. A sprightly Martha Cooper jumps on top of car roofs to get those outdoor whole train panorama shots while Henry Chalfant does one of the best impressions of Keith Haring ever (ok...maybe I exaggerate).




Merci Beaucoup to French graff blog AllCityBlog for bringing this to my attention.

I met Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant  in 2009 at Black Rat when they came to London to release the 25th Anniversary edition of Subway Art.  That was an incredibly exciting experience for me.   None of us will ever replicate their achievement of truely discovering a new artform that had not been documented before quite like the way they did it.

To see what I wrote at that time about that anniversary edition of Subway Art and the experience of meeting Martha, Henry and NY legend Blade who was over with them, click HERE

Subway Art 25th Anniversary Edition

I thought that as a reference book and an X-ray shot into a counter culture that generally is inclined to shun publicity, Subway Art could not be bettered. Sitting with the 30cm x 43cm 25th anniversary addition on my knees (the book – not me) I conclude that as a photograph album this new edition just blows your socks off.







When I looked at the picture above I wondered if it was just the irregular lighting in my irregular kitchen that made the colour of the old book photos look a bit richer but a close comparison reveals the truth. At the larger scale the over-saturation of some of the colours is reduced and you can see more of the detail of the graff archaeology seeping through from the pieces underneath that have been gone over. Obviously, you can only really prove that with the Mk I eyeball, the pics you look at here have been distorted by being captured on the camera, buggered about with the flickr resolution compromises and then knackered by displaying on whatever device you use to read this. This picture is a detail of the L in a BLADE piece, old edition above, anniversary edition below.




The launch and signing graced by the presence of Martha Cooper, Henry Chalfant and Blade drew a legendary attendance of current graffiti writers and London Ol Skool (HAN – “Court and Social” page on this blog?).


Blade, Chalfant, Cooper. Sweet Toof canvas behind.


Interestingly, along with pages from the book being displayed on the wall, some huge canvasses painted by members of the Burning Candy crew provided their own stylistic and lyrical interpretation of a few of the historic and renowned images from Subway Art. Gorgeous stuff. And the Burning Candy guys had to queue like the rest to get their new books signed.


TEK 33 - Subway Fiction



Rowdy - "Train-surfing Mouse"



TEK 33 - Night Of The Denoms