Scott Artley

Anthropology of Hip-Hop

Melisa Riviere

October 10, 2006

Henry Chalfant : A Pioneer in the Documentation of Hip-Hop

            On the weekends between 1976 and 1979, recounts Jeff Chang in his book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, a balding man spent hours standing on subway platforms, an expensive camera in hand, “snapping furiously and sometimes futilely” (Chang 142)  pictures of the decorative writing that had begun to blanket the New York City subway trains. “Writers,” the people responsible for the rapidly-growing presence of graffiti on nearly every surface of the drab urban landscape began noticing the man, wondering about his interest in their work.

            In the next decade, Henry Chalfant, this white man from a wealthy family in Pennsylvania would become a pioneer in the documentation of hip-hop culture. Through his work, Chalfant became an essential part in the burgeoning legitimization, appreciation, and diffusion of hip-hop aesthetics in the United States as well as abroad.

 

Beginnings

            Henry Chalfant grew up in the 1950s in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. In a time after the anxious Second World War, much of the mainstream American population took advantage of economic and social stability, creating picket-fence neighborhoods in the suburbs, watching idyllic television, plunging away the fear of a wartime era by buying new washing-machines and building a physical environment as structurally clean and physically pristine as possible. The aesthetics of sharp lines and clean surfaces, as in the popular paintings of Edward Hopper, and the nostalgic temperance of Norman Rockwell’s imagery permeated the culture. The excesses of the decades that would follow, and with which Chalfant would eventually identify, serve as a strong point of departure from the mid-century’s zeitgeist.

Chalfant’s mother was a founder of a private care institution for disabled children, his father ran the family’s steel-pipe manufacturing firm. The family name “evok[ing] aristocracy” (Chang 142), Chalfant isolated himself from the environment of his upbringing. “I was definitely unhappy where I grew up,” he admits, “which was very privileged, very white, very hid-bound, rule-bound, and rather empty” (Chang142). (Chang 142)

In 1958 he enrolled at Stanford, majoring in Classical Greek with a secondary concentration in creating art, specifically sculpture. He was involved with the Free Speech Movement and anti-war demonstrations so popular in the collegiate California of the 1960s, and in 1967 he and his wife Kathleen left to indulge in the art scene of Europe. “But on frequent visits back to New York City,” Chang describes, “he became intoxicated by the colorful, intricate graffiti on the sides of the subway cars” (Chang 142).  Chalfant realized immediately that these designs, these ephemeral, vibrant, and locomotive paintings were more than a continuation of the Pompeii graffiti of Antiquity, but a living, breathing moment of history. (Chang 142-143)

 

 

 

Photographing the Trains

            In 1973, the Chalfants settled in New York City, and Henry spent his weekends photographing the tags. He developed a special technique after 1978 for photographing the trains while in motion: “The camera would remain in one spot with automatic film advance while the subject (train) moves. The end result is a straight forward single image built from several frames providing more detail. The technique has become one of the standards for photo documentation of trains internationally” (“Henry Chalfant @ 149st”), and his work was printed in full color in Richard Goldstein’s prominent pro-graffiti Village Voice articles. To this day, Chalfant’s photographs of subway trains are some of the most important, and beautiful, to a variety of audiences.

These photographs were influential in the documentation of hip-hop because they slowed down the moving pieces, originally meant to do little else but travel at high speeds throughout the city with the hope for a brief glance by the public and/or recognition by other writers. Captured and adjusted to the simpler second dimension like the contemporary visual art to which the art-viewing public was more accustomed, it had its first step into legitimization. A sculptor, Chalfant surely knew the power of moving between dimensions of space. Yet, by separating the art form from the illegality of the act of invasion on public space, Chalfant was initially also separating prime tenants of graffiti’s production from its appreciation. The aesthetic guidelines laid out by the writers themselves emphasize that the production of writing is just as important as the product. The excitement they feel dodging MTA authorities late at night in train-yards, exploring underground tunnels of the subway system, and a lack of interest (perhaps distaste) for appreciation by the general public—these are all de-emphasized, even contested, by Chalfant’s photographs. The importance, however, lies in the fact that through Chalfant’s photography, the aesthetics of originality, democratization, and the more traditional aesthetics involving the use of line, color, and space, can be made visible to a larger public. From that initial entrance into larger cultural appreciation comes further admittance and understanding of the entire “work” of graffiti.

 

Breaching a New World

            After documenting subway trains for three years, Chalfant was invited by the writer NAC to the Writers’ Bench at 149^th Street. There, he met and befriended writers whose work he began documenting. “To them I was a valuable source for archiving their work,” Chalfant remembered in a radio interview, “and so they overcame rapidly their suspicion that I was a cop and that my involvement was pretty benign and was mainly about pictures” (Jam 4).  Writers became excited about Chalfant’s project, calling on him to brag about their recent endeavors and get their pieces photographed. His studio was also opened to writers, and many visited to view and learn from the photographs. With these young people studying his photographs, Chalfant realized that he was encouraging a new diffusion of style. “In the old days before photography,” Chang quotes him, “you would get style from a king. He would grant you his style and then you could copy the outline if you were part of his crew” (Chang 143).  After photographing the masterpieces, styles were spread to new audiences of writers for reproduction and evolution. At this moment, Chalfant had realized that he was no longer an observer, but was interacting with and altering the landscape of his subject.

 

Exhibition

            The first gallery showing in 1980 of Chalfant’s photographs was unsuccessful by mainstream standards, but was heavily attended by New York City’s graffiti community: “From across the city, hundreds of graffiti writers arrived dressed in their flyest customized denims and sneakers, all color and swagger and joy. The writers took over the gallery, gazing at the twenty shots of whole-car murals in a rush of recognition and future shock” (Chang 143). 

It was at this exhibition that Chalfant met Martha Cooper, a photojournalist for the New York Post and urban folklorist. With the movement of graffiti into galleries (such as CRASH’s 1982 Fashion Mode exhibit) and budding interest by the larger art community, graffiti’s influence was beginning to spread further and further. Keith Haring, a traditionally-trained painter living in New York City, defined graffiti as a major influence on his art, which was already meeting critical success.

Cooper and Chalfant’s book-deal with London-based Thames and Hudson to publish their book Subway Art in 1984 marked a significant win for the further diffusion of Bronx graffiti out of its epicenter into the nation and world. Covered with full-color photographs of writing on subway cars, again showing Chalfant’s characteristic technique, the book sold extremely well. By 1987, the sequel to the book Spraycan Art showcases graffiti in several cities all over the United States as well as abroad—clear evidence of the international diffusion. Joe Austin reports that, “Later interviews with writers in other cities revealed that Subway Art had a major impact on the spread of writing culture across the globe” (Austin 263). 

Still, it was the documentary Style Wars!, appearing in a shortened form on PBS across the United States and a London station in 1983, that marked a significant, enduring success for Chalfant and the hip-hop community. Chalfant had worked with Rita Fecher in documenting the Bronx gang and hip-hop culture in the 1970s with a film called Flyin’ Cut Sleeves (1993), but it was Style Wars, filmed in the same era and environment in which it was released, that grossly effected an influence on the pioneers of hip-hop culture. Working with Tony Silver, the duo used video to document the stories of writers, the MTA, mayor Edward Koch, and writing itself in New York City. Shot between 1981 and 1983, the film represents graffiti at the cusp of hip-hop’s mass recognition and popularity. Audiences of adults during initial screenings disagreed with the liberal, apologetic, even encouraging, attitude toward the writing (‘vandalism’) portrayed in the film, but the documentary exists to this day as a cult classic, standing as a unique historical document for future generations of hip-hop culture.

Filmed by well-educated, white men in touch with both cultures, Style Wars! introduced and diffused a culture across the globe. Subway Art similarly found its way onto the global scene. Presented in a way that gave it legitimacy and honor as much as showcased its unique aesthetic that differentiated it from mainstream American culture, Chalfant’s enduring legacy in the world of hip-hop is his tendency to shy away from the limelight, instead showcasing the culture that fascinates him. His continued work today with City Lore, the New York City urban folklore and heritage project, demonstrates his continued interest in preserving living moments in history.

 

 

Works Cited

Austin, Joe. 2001. Taking the Train: Youth, Urban Crisis, Griffiti. New York: Columbia University Press.

 

Chang, Jeff. 2005. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. St Martin’s Press: New York.

 

"Henry Chalfant @ 149st." @149st. 2000. 9 Oct. 2006 <http://www.at149st.com/chalfant.html>.

 

Jam, Billy. "STYLE WARS DVD: Interview with Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant." Hip Hop Slam. KALX 90.7FM Berkeley. 9 Oct. 2006 <http://www.hiphopslam.com/articles/artic_StyleWarsDVD.html>.