The Henry Chalfant Interview Part 2

The Henry Chalfant Interview Part 2
by Blake Reznik

How do you feel about your pioneering role of bringing graffiti art into the media and public eye?

My excitement in doing it was in part being able to show people something interesting, something new, something amazing happening and unfolding before our eyes. That was a major part of the excitement of doing it initially. Of course what happens is you become a part of the process that has an impact on the phenomenon you’re watching in itself. The process of taking pictures of it, making films about it, doing a book on it, changed it. It changed it one by bringing it to people around the world, and spreading the culture around the world, but it also changed it from within. People’s motivation for doing it became different, it was being made available to people like art gallery people, through photography it was made available to the art world. Then people started painting canvases, it became something the art world could participate in, and that was a big change. You know, doing it for money, for a career or a profession was a very different way from the reasons writers were doing it, which was a more pure thing, not for the outside world, and not for money. It was all wrapped up in the adventure of it and the excitement and danger, and the fact that it was illegal; the aggressive sort of in-your-face quality of graffiti in its original form was changed when it became an art gallery thing. The whole culture which once really thrived or really lived around the whole process of watching what you did, hanging out watching the trains, learning by going bombing with an older writer, comparing notes, and critiquing what you saw, that all changed when photography allowed people to sit down and study it, and copy it. And when graffiti was no longer on the trains, photography completely replaced it. So to the extent that the impact of what I did was, I see as both positive and negative, in the sense that it was part of a process that ushered out the old way.

In relation to the hip-hop culture as a whole, what do you feel the cultural significance of these projects is?

These projects are mainly dealing with the graffiti aspect of it, of course there is breaking in Style Wars, we didn’t deal with the music all that much. These projects provide an important look at the visual aspect of the movement. I think Style Wars was important for showing the Spirit of Hip-Hop, through the breaking scenes, through the striving of the writers, through the battle with the city. That recreates the kind of rebellious aspect of writing, which I see as one of the most important aspects of hip-hop. If you look at the battle scenes at (club) U.S.A. that really gives you a tremendous sense of the power of hip-hop in its original form, which was so competitive and was so much involved in a kind of battle between crews and individuals.

After you began the book, and writers realized that you were going to publish their artwork, did it become a problem for kids latching their hopes onto you?

Yes, that became a problem because people had expectations that weren’t always met, and that caused some anger. The truth is it’s very difficult to make a selection to do a book or a film, you do your best and make the selections, then the publisher comes along and says sorry you’ve only got so many pages, so you’re gonna have to cut half the photos out. So, that was really tough, and the result was a lot of people got left out and that did create some problems. I remember we had a screening of Style Wars when it first came out, and “WASP” came up to me, and he’s in the film, and he said “I don’t like the way I was portrayed.” I said what do you mean, and he said, “you know what I mean, I won’t do anything here in front of your friends, but if I catch you alone, I’m gonna fuck you up.” So naturally, I was nervous about that, I’d reached the age of 40 without ever having to defend myself, so I didn’t know what to do. I knew I couldn’t limit my freedom of movement expecting to be jumped by “Wasp” at any event, so I began studying Karate and I did that for 12 years, eventually achieving a black belt.

In what capacity are you still involved with graffiti?

I’m involved with the archive, the archive is something I make available to people who are doing projects and need to have photos. The last couple of years I was involved in several shows. We had a show at the Whitney Museum where we had a screening of Style Wars and a panel; I was also invited to display graffiti photographs, probably a first time showing of graffiti trains in a major museum. I was also involved in a show at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. In addition we did a show at the Experience Music Museum in Seattle, they have quite a good selection of hip-hop history and memorabilia, lots of photos and videotapes of what was going on.

Do you think that graffiti today is as culturally viable as compared to when you initially undertook your work?

I think that’s in the eyes of the doer. I think what’s happened is that people have become jaded and rather used to it, so they’re in a position of not really seeing it anymore. But to the people who are still doing it and are into it it continues to evolve, it’s still significant.

As someone who lives in New York City would you say there’s just as much graffiti today as there was say 20 years ago?

There’s certainly as much street bombing, and there’s also the whole window-scratching scene. But to me that’s not as interesting because there’s no aesthetic component. That’s what made the subway art so compelling, it was interesting and beautiful. You can’t say the same for window-scratching. And I think street bombing in general there’s too much emphasis on just getting up, though there is some very interesting stuff too.

What is your overall opinion of graffiti today, as far as its evolution or style?

Well, I think that graffiti style as an International style is highly evolved from where it was before, a lot of it has lost the soul that I think it had in New York when it was rougher and perhaps not technologically so accomplished. Europe, Australia and California, places like that, have gone great lengths to take it to another level technically, but some of it leaves me very cold.

Did you ever consider the prospect of doing another book after Spraycan Art?

For a long time the publisher didn’t want to do another book, and we didn’t really see another way of doing it. At one time we did have the publisher interested in doing a “how to” book which we were going to work on with “Lee.” However, the publisher got cold feet because they were getting flack for having produced the first two books, because they had caused a massive (graffiti) attack on England, so they took some of the blame for that, and the board of directors was against doing anything more. I may be interested in doing a memoir of my own work. But as far as doing books, everybody’s doing it, and that’s great at least the stuff is being documented.

What are you up to these days in relation to your own artwork?

I’m more involved in documentary and video. Right now, I’m working on a project that touches upon hip-hop; it’s sort of a social history of the South Bronx through music, from the 1940’s through the 1970’s. It’s called “From Mambo to Hip-Hop.” It’s interesting that this area sort of nurtured both styles of music.

50 years from now, what would you want people to remember about your work?

I think that I’d like to have people see that it’s a kind of praise to the human spirit, that in conditions which were the miserable conditions of urban America in the early 70’s, people were able to rise up and create something so incredible. As graffiti and the hip-hop movement as it was, as it became, I think that it’s an amazing story, that out of the ashes of a ruined city and all the neglect, people were able to create something new and beautiful and in the process create a whole culture and create new paths of creativity for individual lives, which certainly didn’t exist then.

--Blake Reznik

The Henry Chalfant Interview Part. 1

The Henry Chalfant Interview
by Blake Reznik

What made the social climate so ripe for the NYC graffiti explosion of the 70’s and early 80’s?

Primarily in the early 70’s, NYC was in a severe decline; there was a massive movement of funds out of parts of the city like the South Bronx. Deferred maintenance of the subways and really a tremendous neglect of human services and infrastructure, timed with an effort by landlords all over the city within rent-controlled buildings to try and get their investments back. They weren’t getting any income to fix these buildings, and many of them started doing it by illegal means, called “arson for profit.” That’s the era when neighborhoods like the South Bronx were burning down. In that time period of neglect and neglect of the subways as well, it seemed like an ideal breeding ground for all kinds of things. Kids started writing on walls and on trains, not that they hadn’t done it before. But I think another important factor that contributed to this was a technological revolution in the form of the “permanent marker.” Helen Levitt had photographs of graffiti from the 1940’s but it was done in chalk or crayon, impermanent things.

What was it about graffiti art that initially intrigued you personally?

Myself, I was an artist at the time working in New York, I hadn’t lived here very long, I moved here in ’73. In the first 3 years of my riding on the trains I was watching this stuff go on and it intrigued me. You’d go down into the subways anticipating what new thing you might see more outrageous and amazing than you’d seen before, and you were often satisfied, as the things grew bigger, more interesting and bolder as time went along. I was paying attention more to that than I was paying to the New York art movement at the time, which was much more geared to conceptual art and minimal art which was at least as far as a visual expression goes, very limited.

At that time, who was painting prolifically?

The first writers I saw when I visited New York before I moved there, were people like “Cay161” and I saw “Taki” tags too. I couldn’t begin to remember everyone right now. I guess in as much as I could recognize at that time who was painting the trains in the early 70’s, I’d have to say: “Tracy(168)”, “Pnuts”, “Cliff”, “Riff”, “Blade.” I only began taking pictures in ’76 and it was only then that I discovered that the trains also ran outside, having lived only in Manhattan I thought everything was underground. That’s when I realized that I could take pictures from the outside. I began going up to the Bronx and Upper Manhattan mainly, because I lived in the Upper West Side so I could get to those places easily, so I tended to go to those places to take pictures early on.

Were Subway Art and Style Wars conceived at the same time or as individual projects?

Well they were conceived differently, more or less at the same time but very differently. I think it was in 1980 when I had a show at O.K. Harris, that’s when I first met Martha Cooper (co-author Subway Art), by then I had already met writers and knew writers and it was “Dondi” who introduced me to Martha. He told her about the show and that she should come and see it, he’d already told her about me as he’d told me about her, that there was this other photographer out there. So it was at the show that I first met “Marty” and we were competitive for a while (laughs) which drove us on to get out there earlier and more often. It wasn’t too long after that that there was an article in the Village Voice that I had a spread of photos in, and it was at that point I started to consider the idea of doing a book. Richard Goldstein and I talked about doing a book at that time. We actually put together a package, he wrote the introduction and I provided the photos, and we went around to publishers in New York and no one was interested, so we dropped the idea. Then later on, Marty and I decided that we would try again, that with all of our photos taken in different ways as they were, we felt we could really put together a story with good pictures. So we put together the proposal and went around again to the publishers in New York and again got no response. Marty had connections with an agent in Germany and we contacted her and she said come to the Frankfurt book fair where all the publishers from around the world go and they’re accessible. She actually said send your book, but we thought we’d bring it ‘cause it was a huge mock up. We just thought it would be better if we’d brought it, and I’m glad we did because if we’d left it in the hands of the agent, nothing would’ve happened. So, we dragged our book around on a luggage trolley, and we met the people at Thames and Hudson. The art director at Thames and Hudson, Connie Neurath, she loved the stuff and easily persuaded her brother Thomas Neurath to publish the book. That’s how the book (Subway Art) got started.

The film idea came about 6 months after the O.K. Harris show; In Spring of ‘81 I did a performance piece in Common Ground, a performance space in Soho. The piece was called “Graffiti Rock” in which I brought together graffiti slides; break dancers in the form of “Rock Steady Crew” and Fab Five Freddy and Ramelzee as the rappers. The interesting thing is nobody downtown had ever even heard of breaking or seen it at that time. So, I’d heard about it because Marty had stumbled upon breaking in her search for interesting stories. She was a photojournalist and she would listen to police calls, and one night she heard a call about a “rumble” at a station in Washington Heights, so she ran over there to see what was going on and she found these little kids explaining to the cops that they were dancing (laughs). So when I had this performance, I thought it would be interesting to find “breakers.” So, I asked one of the writers I knew, “Take 1” and he said “oh yeah” he knew the best crew in the city, and the next day he brought “Frosty Freeze” and “Crazy Legs” to my studio. That was the performance that Tony Silver the filmmaker came to, he’d met me before and seen my name in connection with the graffiti articles, and an article in the Village Voice that Sally Banes wrote about breaking that also announced the performance. He called me up and wanted to see the show. At the show he asked me if I wanted to collaborate with him on a film, so that’s how the film idea came about (Style Wars). The first thing we shot was the battle at U.S.A between Rock Steady and Dynamic Rockers.

How was the film funded?

For the film we had to raise the money, our first money came from Channel 4 in England, after that we got the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the rest of the money came from the National Endowment for the Arts Media and Folklore Program, National Endowment for the Humanities Grant, as well as a New York State Council for the Arts Grant and a couple of private foundations.

How were you able to initially immerse yourself in the graffiti subculture?

I didn’t really meet any artists for the first three years that I was taking photographs, the result was when I did meet artists I had a huge collection of stuff already in which they quickly recognized their own work. So, I was steered to the “Writer’s Bench” by a kid that I met on the platform while taking pictures one day. I went to the Writer’s Bench at 149th Street and met at that time “Kel,” Mare,” “Shy,” “Crash,” and “Daze” who became sort of the core of the people that I knew. They were very active at the time and I had a lot of their pictures so they saw that and therefore they were relatively quick to accept me. There was certainly some suspicion that I was up to some sort of police work. So there was a lot of that for months, where they were a little shy or not forthcoming or worried, most of them admitting it later, ‘cause they didn’t let on to me. They admitted later that they thought I was just biding my time, waiting to get everybody together to get the information I needed to have a massive citywide bust (laughs). But, it never played out that way and fears were laid to rest. It was really a good relationship we had between us, because they gave me information, and I gave them pictures.

At the undertaking of Style Wars, did you think most of the artists would want to conceal their identities?

Well, the people who wanted to conceal their identities said so initially, and didn’t become a part of it. The climate was much different than it is now, the city’s battle was more of a battle between kids, they didn’t have the resources or means to implement the police-state tactics that are in place now. The courts were overwhelmed, and the cops would bring in a graffiti writer and the judge would just sort of shrug and say “forget about it.” There was a rule in place that the courts wouldn’t even pay attention unless the police actually caught someone in the act. There was none of this comparing of black books and photos which happens now. So people weren’t that cautious. A case in point when I did contact “Cap” he said he would be interviewed but he’d wear a ski mask because he didn’t want to be identified, not so much for the cops but for other writers. The interesting thing was that in the whole process of filming and being interviewed he threw away the idea of wearing the mask.

Did you ever have any encounters with the authorities while either shooting photos or filming?

A couple of times the cops came, because it’s not legal to take pictures on the trains, not having anything to do with graffiti but there is a rule, probably to protect against sabotage. There is also a rule that prohibits taking pictures on Transit Authority property without permission. However, the permission process is kind of ridiculous you go through the rigmarole and bureaucracy of getting permission and then it only lasts for a couple of days. I just said that’s crazy, I’m not gonna do it, I’ll take my chances. The truth is I would get stopped by cops who would say “you can’t do this” and I would just pretend to be an innocent sociology professor. I was always a little afraid of encountering the same cop again, but luckily that didn’t happen. For Style Wars we had to get permission, because taking film crews into the yards was far too expensive to risk aborting each time, so we had to get permission. Also, we’d wanted to interview (Ed) Koch and the Transit Authority, so we had to let them know what we were doing. They made us promise not to shoot the film illegally, and in that case they would give us controlled access. Representatives from the TA would take us down into the tunnels, that’s how those scenes were shot. We did attempt to go in clandestinely with “Seen” one night, but the place was crawling with cops, so we called it off.

Was there ever any situations that you felt were life threatening during these projects?

I saw a few guns, which definitely made me nervous. I think one of the scariest things was, that since I was in a neutral position and knew crews from all over the city, a lot of the people I knew were mortal enemies of one another. It was sometimes hard to keep people out of each other’s way, ‘cause they’d all converge on my studio. There were a number of fights in front of the studio; this was at a period when there were also a couple of shootings (none of these occurring in front of the studio however).

How did your peers react to the undertaking of these projects?

Well where I had my studio, which was an artist Co-op in Soho, opinion was divided. “Crash” painted a piece on the front of my studio door, and the Co-op as a group insisted that I take it down, they allowed me to keep it up for two months and then had me paint it over, which gives you an idea where they were at. There were a few people who thought it was great, but the majority of people in the Co-op didn’t care for it. Part of the reason was that they were all artists, so why did this kid have permission to do it, if they all had their way they’d all paint the door (laughs). At the same time there was a feeling that it was a mess, they didn’t want the neighborhood to become covered with graffiti, and they blamed me when it did. Some of my neighbors were really incensed by it, because there were a lot of kids coming by the studio, and they would wait outside for me. So there would be kids hanging out and the neighbors were afraid of them, it was the usual sort or racist attitude, people were afraid of black kids. My immediate neighbor told me that I was irresponsible to be associating with such people without being a professional, meaning at the very least I should be a social worker to be able to safely traffic or hang out with people whom I was incompetent to know what to do with.

Did you ever imagine that Subway Art would gain the success and popularity it did?

No, photo books tend to sell very few copies and the initial run I think was 3,000 copies. We had no idea, we were just happy having the book as a kind of proof of having done something (laughs) if we sold nothing and had 5 copies ourselves we’d have been happy at that time. It really came as a surprise to us, and a surprise to the publisher. I don’t think anybody believed that it would still be in print from 1984 until now (2000). (As of 1995 Subway Art had sold over 150, 000 copies.)

Part two coming Thursday!