I have known Koe Rodriguez for the longest, but only recently discovered his treasure trove of graff history. I’ll let Koe get into it…
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How did you first get into graff? Did you write, or have you always been more of an aficionado?
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I got into Graff during the early 80s because Hip-Hop was in full effect and everybody was goin’ for theirs. My older cousin and his friends where into it, the media was giving it some exposure and I was personally blown away by it. I was into drawing at the time, so I gravitated towards the element of Hip-Hop that resonated with me the most. I started off like everyone else, a young toy, getting’ up with El Marko markers and Wet Look spray paint.
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By the mid-80s, I began trying my hand at painting. My name was originally “Coe,” but I later changed it to “Koe” after discovering there was a Coe in the Bronx. When it came to piecing, I enjoyed rockin’ the letter “K” much better than the letter “C” as well. As I was actively writing, I began documenting the art as well – this was in 1985 at the age of 15.
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Being a true Gemini and having that insatiable appetite to absorb knowledge, I was also consuming as much information as I could about Hip-Hop and Graffiti in general. This went on for many years and by the time I was in my 20 and 30s, cats were calling me a Hip-Hop encyclopedia and later a scholar. When I was filmed for the movie “Just For Kicks,” they actually gave me that “Hip-Hop Scholar” credit, I never requested it. I’m a pretty humble cat and rarely ride my own jock.
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Courtesy of Koe Rodriguez
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When did you begin collecting materials on graff culture? Where has this path taken you?
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I began collecting graff related items dating back to the early 80s. Newspaper clippings came first and then books like Subway Art and Steven Hager’s Hip-Hop came next. My family was fortunate enough to cop a VCR around 1984 and I began recording anything I could on Hip-Hop culture, especially Graffiti. ABC (Channel 7) ran a few good specials on Hip-Hop early on like 20/20’s “Rappin’ To The Beat,” “The Big Break Contest,” “New York Hot Tracks” and a made for TV movie called “Dreams Don’t Die” featuring Graff by the late, great Dondi White. In the late 80s, I would cut my high school classes, jump on a Path Train and head to the original Soho Zat to boost IGT Magazines and Vaughn Bode comics.
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The 80s were a really special time for consuming all things Hip-Hop. I remember heading over to comic book hot spot Forbidden Planet to rack comics with my lil’ homie and Vulcan (who was working there) had the drop on us and told us to forget about boosting anything. It was actually pretty cool (and funny) being busted by a popular graff writer of the time. Vulcan was cool about the situation and after asking him what would be a good spot to photograph subway burners he put us on to a good spot uptown to bench and catch flicks. As for the path that collecting and being down with Hip-Hop in general has taken me, its allowed me to have a pretty nice career in Hip-Hop. Truthfully, I feel blessed to be doing what I’ve always loved doing, and getting paid for it. Life is a trip.
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Courtesy of Koe Rodriguez
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Which piece is the pride of your collection and why?
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A: Wow – there’s just so many. lol I have vintage Krylon cans for colors that have been discontinued for quite some time. I have my collection of original graff magazines and books. I have thousands of graff related photos dating back to the 80s and more importantly, I have all the great memories. My collection of archives and paraphernalia isn’t exclusive to graff related items. I’ve collected pretty much anything that deals with Hip-Hop culture in general. My home office is a serious omage to the culture. My file cabinet is covered in Hip-Hop related stickers alone – anything from an original “OPP” sticker or Yo MTV trading cards to Hip-Hop apparel hang tags that I customized into magnets. I have some real conversation pieces.
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Having observed graff for three decades, what would you say is the most impressive thing about how the culture has developed during this time? What has been the most surprising?
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Graff culture never ceases to amaze me. Its essentially gone from a secret society of outlaw artists to an internationally recognized artform with a global contingency. It went from being eradicated below ground to blowing up something crazy above ground. I’m always impressed at how Graff’s evolution, be its style or its lifestyle has maintained immense resiliency, cleverness, inventiveness and steady progression. Graff writers are pop culture’s new rock stars. Guys like Lee and Cope 2 who were considered outlaws and their works considered urban blight, are global celebrity’s and bankable talent.
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Graff culture is unstoppable and it’s gonna continue to grow and radiate for many years to come. With corporations still eager to get in between the sheets with graff artists to promote or sell their products and/or services, more and more writers are seeing a reason to stick to their guns and take their craft to much higher levels. Hip-Hop is big business and rappers shouldn’t be the only ones prospering from it anymore; not when art is one of the most provocative, respected and lucrative mediums on the planet.
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Courtesy of Koe Rodriguez
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You mention you have pen pal letters! What’s that all about?
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A: Back in the late 80s, myself and some of my graff friends like: Ket, Cole, Nic 1, Cavs, and John The Greek were communicating with other writers around the globe and engaging in photo trading, which was essentially swapping your graff photos for other writer’s photos – kinda like trading baseball cards. My foray into photo trading started off around 1987 after reaching out to West Coast graff magazine “Ghetto Art” (which later became “Spray Can Art”) and starting a friendship with the rag’s publishers, Charlie DTK and Tim “Power.” Charlie, who is now considered a West Coast graff legend, would send me dope graff flicks by him and hot LA writers and I would send him hot graff flicks from New York. We would always include a letter with all of our flicks to exchange information, gossip or to simply shoot the shit.
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Sometimes we would even send each other packages containing VHS and audio tapes of graff related stuff like “Style Wars” and Hip-Hop mix shows by Red Alert, Chuck Chillout and Mr. Magic. This is all pre-Internet and if you wanted to holler at anyone out of town or abroad, you sat down and wrote a letter or you hollered at them on the phone. Eventually, more cats started getting down with photo trading and the next thing you knew, I was writing cats from New York to Holland…it was crazy! I have a huge folder of all the original letters I ever received from the cats I wrote to dating back to the late 80s. Looking back, it’s bugged-out how committed we were to our craft.
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Courtesy of Koe Rodriguez
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What are your plans for the collection?
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I recently took a bunch of my Hip-Hop collectibles to the Las Vegas apparel show “Magic.” I consult for the heritage Hip-Hop brand Sedgwick & Cedar and laced our booth with some of my vintage Hip-Hop pieces. I was instrumental in laying out the booth’s overall flavor and had some of my prize pieces like an old name buckle, vintage Krylon cans and markers and Cazal glasses in these hot trophy cases. The booth looked like a Hip-Hop museum and mad heads were drawn to it on the strength of its funky true school flavor. It worked well with baggin’ sales and it definitely let cats know that there were some real vets in the house. Some of my graff related collectibles are featured in a book that I began working on with my old shooting partner from Brooklyn, John The Greek.
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This book features some of our greatest NY Graff flicks from the late 80s to 1993. The book has a lot of shots of dope subway graff during its twilight on the New York subway system, which is significant in itself. It also features the “Foto Kingz,” the crew of graff writers who also documented graffiti culture for crazy years. That crew consisted of Cavs, Ket, Cole, John The Greek, Nic 1, Charlie DTK and later me. I’m hoping we really get a chance to publish the book as its content is not just culturally and historically significant, but just a hot slice of true Hip-Hop culture.
Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton
August 14–September 26, 2010
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Chris Pape (aka Freedom) is an American painter and graffiti artist. Pape started tagging subway tunnels and subway cars in 1974 as “Gen II” before adopting the tag “Freedom”. He was a witness and a participant to the 20-year run of the New York subway graffiti movement.
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He began writing as Gen II in 1974 and finished his career on the trains in 1983 with the tag Freedom.
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Pape is best known for his numerous paintings in the eponymous Freedom Tunnel, an Amtrak tunnel running underneath Manhattan’s Riverside Park. Prominent paintings in the Freedom Tunnel attributed to Pape include his “self-portrait” featuring a male torso with a spray-can head and “There’s No Way Like the American Way” (aka “The Coca-Cola Mural”), a parody of Coca-Cola advertising and tribute to the evicted homeless of the tunnel. Another theme of Freedom’s work is black and silver recreations of classical art, including a reinterpretation of the Venus de Milo and a full train car recreation of the iconic hands from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.
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Pape will be exhibiting a self portrait from the Freedom Tunnel in “Down by Law” at the Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, opening on August 14, 2010. He has graciously agreed to speak about his work here.
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New York in the 1970s and 1980s was a city bursting with originality, innovation, and experimentation. Please talk about how you see the relationship between your early work as an artist and the environment in which it took hold.
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The great cities of the 20th century are Paris in the 20s, Berlin in the 30s, and New York in the 70s; and I guarantee you, there will never be another city like New York in the 70s. The gay rights movement, the feminist movement, punk rock, hip hop, graffiti, the blackout, Son of Sam, tabloid journalism, street gangs (in 1977 it became fashionable for gang members to walk through the streets with golf clubs), the blackout, Saturday Night Fever — Saturday Night Live — it all came out of New York!
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If there were one particular moment that defined my later work it would have to be in the 1960s. In 1965, at the age of five, my parents wouldn’t let me leave the block alone. I was allowed to go “subway fishing”, this meant laying atop a subway grating and swinging a string with gum affixed to it until it hovered over a lost coin or some other treasure and hoisting them up. These were long summer days that seemed to go on endlessly. I pulled up Indian head pennies, buffalo nickels, matchbooks, a baseball card, and other bits of junk that somehow stayed in the back of my brain until the early 80s.
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In 1980 I was already a graffiti writer doing letters on the sides of trains, I quickly found out that I could paint realistic images with spraypaint and looked for a place to do it. There was a freight train tunnel in Riverside Park where trains still ran, the gratings formed 15-foot high canvasses of light against the walls, and in those beams of light I repainted the images of my youth including a baseball card. In 1986 the homeless moved in and became known as the “Mole People”, I stopped painting and documented their lives for three years. I finished my mural work in 1995. I tell the story because I can’t think of any other city in America where something like that could’ve happened. That was New York back in the day.
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It has recently been suggested to me that the term “graffiti” is marginalizing, and loaded with negative connotations. How do you feel about the use of the word in general, as well as application to your work as an artist?
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The graffiti word is offensive, but it was the only word to describe the early stages of the movement. In 1974 the word “graffiti artist” was coined in the New York Times—that seems like a happy marriage. I don’t lose any sleep over this stuff.
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As a working artist over the past three decades, you have seen first hand how the art world—from galleries and dealers to museums and collectors—responds and reacts to contemporary American art. What are your thoughts on the differences (and similarities, if applicable) between the US, European, and Asian markets?
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I think the art world as a whole views the works of artists as commodities. Let’s not forget the lessons of the 1980s when graffiti canvases were sold for huge amounts right up until the stock market crash. Things do seem a lot more liberal in Europe where graffiti artists from New York are celebrated and have been for years.
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Who are your artistic inspirations, and how have they influenced your ideas, aesthetics, and actions through the course of your career?
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Hopper is my favorite painter, I think he tapped into the American psyche more then any other painter of the last century, but I don’t think he inspires me. I’ve bitten generously from Warhol, Oldenburg and Rosenquist, you can see the Rosenquist influence in the “Buy American” painting. Warhol and Oldenburg are there on a more spiritual level.
For “Down by Law” you will be exhibiting your self portrait from the Freedom Tunnel. Please talk about the importance of this piece, and the context in which it was created.
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The self portrait for the show was originally painted in the tunnel in 1984. At the time it wasn’t THE FREEDOM TUNNEL, it was just me doing my thing, which allowed me to fail a lot. This painting didn’t really fit in with the themes I had established, but it seemed to work and was published in a number of books. It’s a self portrait. The jacket was given to me by my parents in 1976, I left home in ’77 and lived in the jacket, quite literally. The spraycan head is an old graffiti device that seemed to describe my life at the time.
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There has been a wide array of artists to emerge from the early graffiti movement. How have your earlier experiences influenced you ideas about art, and in what direction would you like to go?
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When I left the tunnel in 1995 I was a little bit dazed. I was stuck as a painter, although I continued my visual journalism work. I did my new paintings large, and then small, in color, with a sable brush – it seemed as though nothing worked. Of course the answer was that it couldn’t work. The paintings in the tunnel are just that, there in a tunnel. In the same way that if you buy a subway graffiti artist’s work it’s best to buy an entire subway car or it loses context. I think that’s a battle that all graffiti writers that started on trains have had. I’m not saying I’ve fully overcome it but I’ve come close.
Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton
August 14–September 26, 2010
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Martha Cooper is a documentary photographer born in the 1940s in Baltimore, Maryland. She began photographing in nursery school after her father gave her a camera. She graduated from high school at the age of 16, and from Grinnell College with a degree in art at age 19. From 1963-65, she taught English as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand and then journeyed by motorcycle from Bangkok to England where she received an ethnology diploma from Oxford. She was a photography intern at National Geographic Magazine in the 1960s, and worked as a staff photographer for the Narragansett Times in Rhode Island and at the New York Post in the 1940s.
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Martha is perhaps best known for documenting the New York graffiti scene of the late 1970s and early 80s. While working for the New York Post she began taking photos of creative play on the Lower Eastside in order to use up the remaining film in her camera each day before developing it. One day she met a young boy named Edwin who showed her his drawings and explained that he was practicing to write his nickname on walls. Edwin offered to introduce her to a graffiti king. This is how she met the great stylemaster, Dondi, who eventually allowed her to photograph him in the yards at night while he was painting. In 1984, with Henry Chalfant, she published Subway Art, a landmark photo book that subsequently spread graffiti art around the world.
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In addition to publishing more than a dozen books, Martha’s photographs have appeared in innumerable magazines including National Geographic, Smithsonian and Vibe. She is the Director of Photography at City Lore, the New York Center for Urban Folk Culture. She still lives in Manhattan but is currently working on a photo project in Sowebo, a Southwest Baltimore neighborhood.
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Cooper will be exhibiting four silver gelatin prints from her early b-boy documentary work in “Down by Law” at the Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, opening on August 14, 2010. She has graciously agreed to speak about her work here.
New York in the 1970s and 1980s was a city bursting with originality, innovation, and experimentation. Please talk about how you see the relationship between your early work as a photographer and the environment in which it took hold.
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I’ve long been drawn to anything made by hand perhaps because my parents always encouraged creative play. In 1977 I began working as a staff photographer for the New York Post and the job required that we cruise around the city all day in our cars with two-way radio contact to the news desk in case there was a breaking assignment. When not on assignment we were supposed to look for feature “weather” photos. My favorite neighborhood for photos was Alphabet City on the Lower Eastside where I could almost always find kids making something from nothing.
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It has recently been suggested to me that the term “graffiti” is marginalizing, and loaded with negative connotations. How do you feel about the use of the word in general, as well as application to your work?
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Writers probably enjoy being associated with “negative connotations”. Being bad can be cool. Of course the term graffiti has been around much longer than markers and spray paint. In NYC, it’s most fitting for tags but less appropriate for sophisticated spray painted walls. Words and their connotations change over time. Just let me know what you want me to call it and I’ll be happy to oblige. If you prefer the term aerosol art, I’ll go with that stilted though it may be.
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As a working photographer over the past three decades, you have seen first hand how the art world—from galleries and dealers to museums and collectors—responds and reacts to contemporary American art. What are your thoughts on the differences (and similarities, if applicable) between the US, European, and Asian markets?
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As a documentary photographer I’ve always been more interested in publishing my photos in books and magazines than showing them in galleries. I never paid much attention to the art market until very recently. Collectors in Europe and Japan seem more eager to collect “graffiti” (should I say aerosol?) related work. I’m just happy that people anywhere enjoy looking at my pictures.
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Who are your artistic inspirations, and how have they influenced your ideas, aesthetics, and actions through the course of your career?
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My dad was an amateur photographer and he used to take me on “camera runs” with the Baltimore Camera Club so my first experience with photography was just going out looking for pictures and that’s still my approach today…
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I’m from a generation of street photographers who never studied photography. I grew up seeing photojournalism magazines like Look and Life and National Geographic and wanted to become a professional photographer so that I could travel the world. I was always more interested in thinking about what I wanted to photograph than how I was going to shoot it. It was never my intention to make art.
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For “Down by Law” you will be exhibiting your silver gelatin prints of Rock Steady Crew members Frosty Freeze, Ken Swift, Crazy Legs, and Doze Green . Please talk about your work documenting the b-boy movement, and the way in which these photographs—in particular that of Frosty—have become historic markers of the culture.
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I first encountered b-boys by chance in 1980 in Washington Heights and was so impressed that I contacted Sally Banes, a dance writer, to help me document them. It took us a year before we had enough material to publish a story. We asked Henry Chalfant to help us find dancers. He was organizing an event with graffiti, rapping and DJing and thought dance would be a great addition. Through his graffiti contacts, we met Crazy Legs.
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The resulting story in the Village Voice in April 1981 with Frosty Freeze on the cover introduced breaking and Rock Steady to the world. Because NYC is a media town, magazines and film crews quickly covered the “new” dance. Henry filmed them for his movie Style Wars as did Charlie Ahearn for Wild Style. The words “Hip Hop” were not in general use at the time but as people became more aware of the culture, breaking was included as an integral part and the Rock Steady Crew became worldwide celebrities. As far as I know my photos are the earliest documentation of b-boying.
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There has been a wide array of artists to emerge from the early graffiti and Hip-Hop movement. How have your earlier experiences documenting b-boys, young writers in the yards, and trains running along the lines influenced you ideas about art, and in what direction would you like to go?
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I don’t think a lot about art. Still photography is a wonderful way to document. In a fraction of a second the camera can capture and preserve a million details. I’m interested in using photography for historic preservation. I want people to look at my photos and get a sense of what life was like at a specific time and place.
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I’ve seen New York City change radically over the past 30 years and my photos are appreciated because they are a record of a different time. For the past 4 1/2 years I’ve been documenting a difficult neighborhood in Baltimore with a vibrant street life. My hope is that in thirty years these photos will similarly be enjoyed.
