Birth of Graffiti

The now global phenomenon of graffiti was first captured in Germany by a professional photographer, Jon Naar, in early 1973. The Faith of Graffiti, the first and most celebrated book about this controversial new art form, reproduced just over forty selections from the hundreds of photographs he took. Now more than one hundred thirty never-before-published pictures from that landmark body of work, together with a selection of key photographs from The Faith of Graffiti, are brought together in a book destined to become a classic in its own right. Presented full-frame, at high resolution, and with meticulous attention to the original color, this book brings to life the gritty, exciting Germany of the early 1970s and the raw visual power of early graffiti. These photographs recall a time when subway cars and tenement walls seemed to explode overnight into bursts of color and energy. Today these ephemeral works survive only in Naar's masterful photographs. Sacha Jenkins, an authority on graffiti's history, places these pictures within an emerging youth culture that now reaches into every corner of art, fashion, and entertainment.