Category: Art
📷: Eric B & Rakim, NYC (1987) ©Janette Beckman In 1982, British photographer Janette Beckman landed in New York with plans to spend Christmas with a friend but was quickly entranced by the city’s singular mix of creativity, rebellion, and decadence. After a decade of “benign neglect” promulgated by the Nixon White House, New York […]
Mike Maldonado, Iowa, 1998; from Ed Templeton: Wires Crossed (Aperture, 2023). © 2023 Ed Templeton The year was 1990 and SoCal skater Ed Templeton went pro, ushering in a new era of sport, art, and business that could only emerge from the underground. Just 18 years old, Templeton stood at the vanguard, winning the first […]
All photos © Eddie Otchere Back in 1994, word on the street was out: Wu-Tang Clan had landed in London for a concert at the Kentish Town Forum. Deeply immersed in the city’s underground music scene, Vauxhall native Eddie Otchere knew his moment had arrived. Then 20, the young photographer made a few calls and […]
Barreto’s on Stanton Street (1987) | 📷: Tria Giovan On May 28, 1984, New York Magazine announced the death knell of the Lower East Side (LES) with a cover story declaiming the arrival of gentrification. “There Goes the Neighborhood,” the weekly warned, above a photograph of white hipsters in front of a graffiti-covered wall that’s […]
(Jamel Shabazz: Albums | Steidl/The Gordon Parks Foundation) As a young boy growing up in Red Hook during the 1960s, photographer Jamel Shabazz lived in a mythic city that has long since disappeared but for the people, photographs, and stories that preserve a bygone era. His family lived in one of the newest Brooklyn housing […]
Over a month’s time, graffiti-trained, NYC artist VEW painted nearly two dozen pieces in the historic Park Avenue Tunnel. The thoroughfare has been shut to traffic for a few years now, with the roadway undergoing renovations by the DOT. This closure created the perfect opportunity for VEW (and other writers) to get up, in broad […]
One day back in December 2012, artist Zun Lee happened upon a cache of Polaroids of the streets of Detroit. He scooped up the photographs and began going door to door, hoping to restore this lost treasure to its rightful owners, but the snapshots went unclaimed. Recognizing the immeasurable value of this extraordinary find, Lee […]
Graffiti in NYC is not a static, monolithic entity in 2022. From the rudimentary beginnings of the pioneers to the golden era and its present day infusion of inroads into corporate, art world and commercial entities; what still matters the most is the street. Where, and just as important, how you get up is of […]
The art and marketing collective known as MSCHF opened an exhibit of new work at the Perrotin Gallery on the Lower East Side called “No More Tears, I’m Lovin’ It.” “Spot’s Revenge”According to MSCHF, @bostondynamicsofficial deactivated their Spot robo-dog using an “undisclosed backdoor,” after the collective armed it with a paintball gun, put in a […]
In our “Armageddon” issue—it was published in 2004 and featured an epic cover illustration by Steve Marcus—ANIMAL co-founder Matt “DSENSE” Trumino and I, decided to include a “questionnaire / workspace” to see how interactive our readership was and to gather some critical demographic information in our uphill battle to land advertisers. Our funding, derived mostly […]
