Words: John Z.
Photo: John Naar
When photojournalist Jon Naar was exposed to the New York City graffiti during the early 1970s, it was only natural to capture what he saw behind the lens of his camera. Armed with nothing more than two cameras and a fist full of subway tokens, Naar set out in search of tags that adorned subway cars and walls in Harlem, Washington Heights and the Bronx. Even with a client list including The Sunday Times of London, Vogue and The New York Times Magazine, Narr, now 86, recalls, “I was excited by what I was seeing.”
On the first day of his photo expedition, Naar took the subway uptown with the hopes of capturing a few tags. As soon as he arrived at the 155th Street station, a group of young Hispanic and African-American graf writers approached him. When Naar explained that he and his colleague, Mervyn Kurlansky, were doing a book on graffiti, the group of writers embraced them and pointed out where they could later find tags by Stay High 149 and Taki 183, among others pioneers. During a two-week period in the winter of 1973, Naar shot nearly 3,000 pictures—39 of which later ended up on the pages of Faith of Graffiti [Praeger, ’74].
The book sold more than 68,000 copies, was later bootlegged in the Netherlands and became the first book to document New York graffiti. Norman Mailer wrote its introduction, which garnered graffiti some attention in the mainstream art world. “It was a famous book and around that time, graf was starting to go everywhere, but people didn’t know what it was,” remembers Nelson Keen Karse, a native New Yorker who tagged Team from 1974 to 1977. “It was a sign of the times, no doubt. [The book] is almost more important now than it was at the time.”
This spring, 155 of Naar’s photos shot during the 1973 sessions will be released in The Birth of Graffiti [Prestel Publishers] and picks up where Faith of Graffiti left off almost 30 years later. Mass Appeal’s own editorial director Sacha Jenkins penned an introduction to Naar’s essay, “On Becoming a Graffiti Photographer.” “This is my 12th book and every new book is like having a child,” says Naar with a smile. “What I captured is the zeitgeist, which is a German word that could be used to describe this book because it captures the time and place and a spirit of an era.”
You can order Birth of Graffiti at Prestel Publishing.
