"I started taking photos of graffiti on trains in 1976. I couldn't contain my curiosity and enthusiasm for this emerging art that I was seeing on all these New York trains. I was a sculptor on the verge of a career change. I thought someone should keep a record of it."
Henry Chalfant studied at Stanford University, where he specialised in classical Greek. He later pursued a career as a sculptor, exhibiting his work in New York and Europe. He turned to photography and documentary film in order to make an in-depth study of hip-hop culture and graffiti art. He co-produced the documentary film "Style Wars" with Tony Silver. In the early 80's, Henry Chalfant became the unofficial archivist of graffiti art in New York City.
"I started taking photos of graffiti on trains in 1976. I couldn't contain my curiosity and enthusiasm for this emerging art that I was seeing on all these New York trains. I was a sculptor on the verge of a career change. I thought someone should keep a record of it. I grabbed my lens and started photographing all those trains outside. Eventually I met the people who had done the graffiti and became a kind of unofficial archivist of their art. They provided me with information that became an invaluable aid to my efforts to photograph the most beautiful trains while they were still fresh. Once they realised that I wasn't a cop, their fears disappeared and the relationship between the artists and me came naturally. This allowed me to be at the forefront when the art world began to take an interest in their art.
I had the photos and with the graffiti artists we were in the early days of the movement. It wasn't easy, of course, and I had to learn to think differently in order to overcome my naivety and protect myself from the street. But that was long before I got tired of the daily pilgrimages of graffiti artists to my studio; first from all over the city, and eventually from all over the world. It was so exciting to be part of something so essential, new, unpredictable and ultimately so significant to the world. My studio was home not only to graffiti artists, but it was also a post-modern archive for museums and teachers, film-makers, writers, sociologists, anthropologists, photographers and historians who wanted to discover the most exciting thing happening in the contemporary urban landscape.
For about ten years, I was obsessed with photographing trains. I went everywhere, from Manhattan to the Bronx and, less frequently, the Lower East Side, Brooklyn and Staten Island. During these escapades, I would take pictures of kids who were always ready to give me a B-Boy break. Later, I was invited by DJs to jams in the parks to take pictures of their equipment, turntables, vinyl collections and huge speakers. I started to become known as Henry the photographer, the graffiti archivist. It was ironic, because up until then I'd been a sculptor and never thought of myself as a photographer. I simply used photography to preserve graffiti art.
I never once thought about the impact my photos of these kids from the hip hop movement would have today. I developed a great respect for professional photographers, who knew how to take images of life (try getting a good break dance image!). When it came to documenting movement, I always felt more comfortable photographing the flat surfaces of trains. But it turns out that over time, these photos of the kids I met tell us the story of those years; how young people were able to improvise with so few resources, creating a whole new culture that is now reflected all over the world? Art critics were talking about the exhaustion of forms, which was beginning to affect my own motivation to create, and at the same time, I was seeing a kind of expression that was so new and fresh."
© Henry Chalfant / © Speerstra Gallery