Introducing the new issue of the Stylefile Blackbook Sessions series, there is once again an update from the most diverse sketchbooks and desks in the scene. From simple studies to detailed full-pagers, whether analogue or digital, everything is included on 160 pages. For some, sketches are merely a necessity and a means to an end, while for others, they are an independent discipline in the field of graffiti. What all of them have in common, however, is that you have to deal intensively with the process of sketching in order to develop your own style. How wide the range of approaches is can be studied in this book. It provides exciting insights into the approaches of the most diverse types of writers. Insights that would remain hidden from most people even in the age of social media.

Sketches in graffiti have always existed. A white sheet of paper and a marker have been the starting point of every good style for years. In the beginning, sketches were only done with normal pens, but soon professional layout markers were part of the writer‘s basic equipment. This was then the measure of all things for decades, but in recent years, new possibilities have helped this genre take another relevant leap: With acrylic markers, it is now finally possible to work with opaque colors and no longer have to use only white paper as a background. But the leap from analogue to digital has also been made by now in the field of sketching in graffiti: Tools like Procreate have recently formed a completely new basis for a whole generation of writers to create works of art with letters. You can notice that for many writers, sketching has established itself over the years as a discipline of its own within the field of graffiti. Due to the expanded technical possibilities, the question of when a work can still be declared a sketch and where a canvas begins can no longer be answered with a clear distinction. For another part of the scene, however, sketches are still a necessity and a means to an end: to further develop one‘s own style or to have something for the next production on the wall or train. What all of them have in common, is that you have to deal intensively with the process of sketching. How wide the range of approaches is can be studied in this book. It provides exciting insights into the approaches of the most diverse types of writers. Insights that would remain hidden to most, even in the age of social media, and that we can now show to a large audience!

Line-up:
ACUT · AEMIR · ALOE · AMIR · AMIT · AMUSE126 · AROME · MR.BAKER · CHECK · CIDE · COPSA · COSMA · CROW · DATOR · DEJOE · DISKO · DOE · DREIST · DREY · EKSIT · ERPEL · FACT · FLASH · FLOR76 · FNACK · FRED · HOKUS · INKA · JEFF · JEROO · JONES · KACAO77 · KAHN · KIEs · LOCO · MAROK · MIND · MONKEY · OSBKUR87 · PAW · PLAQUE · PLAST · RAZOR · REK · RINE · ROLEX · ROLY · RTMONE · RUSTE · SATAN · SEIN12 · SEMOR · SEW · SEWER · SHAW · SLIDER · S.KAPE289 · SOFLY · SOME · SPENDA · SUNCHES · SWET · TOWN · TRES · TRUBA · TRUN · TWIK · VENTS137 · ZAILOR

27 x 16 cm, 160 pages.

Untold Stories : Inside Graffiti Writing Culture Author: René Van Kan -Size: 17x24cm -Pages: 208 -Text: English - -What starts out as a hobby - can eventually become a way of life. Lifting - or shadowing you in every move you make. Just as graffiti writing can provoke fond memories of adventure - rebellion - and friendship - for those less lucky only a pile of old documents remains. A reminder of paid fines and laws broken. UNTOLD STORIES Inside Graffiti Writing Culture - brings us close to the inner sanctum of the diverse culture of graffiti writing. Featuring 43 stories from across the globe on 208 pages - each author shares a pivotal moment in their lives which became part of what made them the people they are today. The stories cover many aspects of graffiti through the author‘s lives - from youthful experimentation that ends up in mainstream media - to strange encounters with the law that end in surprising twists. Including: AMUCK (AUS) - ASKE (RU) - ATOME (AUS) - ATSOK (PT) - BILL SHARP (AUS) - CAKES (SE) - CALVIN & IN3 (AUS) - CAN2 (DE) - CASROC (NL) - CENTO (IT) - DART (SE) - DEACE (FR) - DIAGRAM (AUS) - DIPHER (AUS) - FLUSTA (AUS) - HBOO (DE) - HOMBRE (DE) - IBRAHIM WIJBENGA (NL) - IKE (IT) - JEROO (DE) - JOHN DERRICK (AUS) - KAM (DE) - KAOS (SE) - KASINO (AUS) - KISS (SE) & BILLY BADASS (NO) - KRIXL (DE) - LOOMIT (DE) - LOW (IT) - LOVEPUSHER (UK) - NAWAS (BE) - NEOB (IT) - NORIS (DE) - NUNO VIEGAS (PT) - RASK (IE) - REBO (AUS) - RUSK MA’CLAIM (DE) - SECSE (IT) - SPER (DE) - SPICE (AUS) - WREN (AUS) - VERO (BE) ABOUT THE EDITOR - With a graffiti career spanning multiple decades and much of the globe - René Van Kan is by no means your typical graffiti writing veteran. The initial push to create “Untold Stories” came from an observation that every graffiti writer has their own stories to tell - beyond the stories they are telling on walls or trains. His goal: to capture some of these moments in time - before they are lost forever. Born in the Netherlands - he was raised in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne - Australia - where he latched onto graffiti as a young boy. Over the years - this hobby becoming a way of life - taking him to other ends of the earth. For almost a decade after completing his Bachelor of Fine Art Painting at Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne Australia - he worked for various fine art materials businesses and brands - before immersing himself deep into the international graffiti industry. As well as helping out on numerous international graffiti books - events and projects - he has come a long way since the small legal painting jobs he did for local businesses as a teenager.

Analog Delinquents, known for their fanzines focusing on analog photos, have compiled this book about freight train journeys around the world.

Just like the fanzines, you get a great mix of images and interviews.

100 pages of travelogues from freight trains around the world.

Photos and interviews/travel narratives by Reallifeism, A_Kiwara, DIE8, and Mouse.

Format: 100 Pages

Soft cover 170 x 240

Language: English

After being out of print and in high demand for years, this title is finally available in a beautiful hardcover edition.

Cholo Writing is the 20th century’s oldest form of graffiti, a Mexican-American phenomenon evident in Los Angeles long before the appearance of tags and pieces in New York. It has had a major influence on the visual expressions of Californian culture, including the lowrider, surf, skate and hip-hop movements.

This volume documents the aesthetic evolution of the form."Placas" are territorial inscriptions created to define a gang’s turf, a genuine, constantly evolving urban calligraphy with strict codes used by Latino gangs for street writing since the late 1930s. Here, the aesthetic evolution of Cholo Writing is documented and the influence of blackletter typefaces and calligraphic models such as Old English is traced through two collections of photographs. One by Californian Howard Gribble, who photographed Chicano gang graffiti over a wide geographic area in the early 1970s, and one by French graphic designer and writer François Chastanet, who traveled to the same Los Angeles neighborhoods in 2008 to document early 21st century inscriptions.

The main essay of this second edition has been updated according to the latest historical research on lettering sources. With foreword by Dr. Chaz Bojórquez, East Los Angeles graffiti pioneer and Godfather of West Coast Cholo Writing for over 50 years.

ISBN 9789188369857
Dokument Press
Hardcover, 140 pages, 16 x 24 cm

Author: Jacob Kimvall

Why does the CIA praise graffiti as a colorful symbol of the optimism and hope of the Western World while officials in many cities describes the same phenomenon as a criminal activity and a representation of unsafety and social problems?

Graffiti is a word used to denote a complex system of actions and things, which is often described as a singular phenomenon. Graffiti has been understood and evaluated in many ways, often opposing each other. Graffiti may therefor both be evoked as one of the most influential art movements on the planet, and dismissed as something that destroys private property and turns a neighborhood into slum. It is hailed as a modern day childhood adventure and denounced as gang related criminality.

In his Ph.D. thesis The G-Word, art historian and former graffiti writer Jacob Kimvall studies different ways of describing and framing graffiti in four historical and cultural contexts: The graffiti writing on the Berlin wall; the Zero Tolerance on graffiti in Stockholm during the 1990s; The interactions between subcultural graffiti and the cultural and commercial interest of the institutional art world in the 1970s and 80s; The collecting, organizing and publishing of images by graffiti enthusiasts.

The G-Word visualize how different institutions, public and commercial interests have acted to influence and affect the understanding of graffiti as both art, crime and a broad socio-cultural phenomenon.

• ISBN 9789185639687
• Dokument Press
• Paperback, 224 pages, 17 x 14 cm

Tony ”Rubin” Sjöman has become a staple of the street art scene of New York City and beyond. His abstract and geometrical pieces are rooted in traditional graffiti but break the rules of the craft with its muted color palette and Scandinavianly clean lines. The art book Rubin: New York / Scandinavia brings you inside his studio, into art galleries, and takes you on a journey to the streets of New York, marked by his large scale murals.

Rubin was nine years old when he wrote his first tag. The son of Finnish immigrant workers to Sweden he was raised in the working class housing projects of Bergsjön in Gothenburg, Sweden. Surrounded by grey concrete and tram tunnels, the walls whispered his name. He grabbed a spray can and set out on a journey that he’s still on today.

“Something happens when I press the cap and draw the first line of a piece. The expectation that takes hold of me is so strong that everything else around me ceases to exist.”

Rubin draws inspiration from his gritty upbringing, the tram tunnels where he first learned the craft and from the contrasts that have formed him into the artist he is today: the skyline of the hectic metropolis versus the serenity of the Nordic nature, all perfectly balanced in his art. With raw talent and relentless hard work Rubin has created a unique aesthetic that carries the art form beyond its boundaries.

Author: Sean Cliver

The skateboard decks documented in this special collection are immaculately photographed and laid-out for maximum graphic glory.

In “The Bible”, the visuals take center stage, but the fascinating vignettes and recollections provided by an A-list of skateboarding personalities from Tony Hawk to Mike Vallely, Mark Gonzales to Stacy Peralta bring context to the aesthetic mayhem.

The board graphics within The Disposable Skateboard Bible are broken down by decade: (beginning in 1960) docu- menting some of the earliest deck designs; through the 70s and the game-changing advent of urethane wheels; the 80s with its ups and downs, big decks and mass-market popularity; fi- nally, the graphic chaos of the 90s through the turn of the mil- lennium.

This book is a blue chip, must-have reference for any graphics library.

• ISBN 9781584237990
• Gingko Press
• Hardcover, 368 pages, 23 x 28 cm

The art of the Japanese tattoo has fascinated people across the world for decades, but in Japan they are taboo since traditional full body tattoos are associated with the Japanese mafia – the Yakuza.

Few organisations are as feared as the legendary Yakuza. They have an impact well beyond Japan, in real life as well as in popular fiction.

Yakuza Tattoo offers a unique insight into the dragons, fish and gods that form the identity of the Yakuza. While the motifs are inspired by the structure of the organisation, Japanese history and mythology, younger members tend to add a contemporary touch to their body art. Andreas Johansson is an academic and one of a small number of persons that have been allowed to photograph and interview members of one of the world’s most secretive organisations.

Yakuza Tattoo includes detailed images of widely different Yakuza tattoos. At one stage, right in the middle of a gang war, Johansson frequented the shady nightclubs, bars, restaurants and back streets of Yokohama in the company of a Yakuza boss. He also visited the homes of members of the Yakuza, documenting Yakuza symbols and body art.

Andreas Johansson did what any first-rate photojournalist does – go into the field and immerse himself in the world of his subjects. Guided by the yakuza’s most famous symbol, the tattoo, Johansson offers a revelatory look inside the culture and mythology of Japan’s extraordinary underworld.

• ISBN 9789188369215

• Dokument Press

• Paperback, 112 pages. 17 x 21 cm