Documenting graffiti is a futile task and not one to be taken on by the completist, because there is no such thing as complete in this world, it is mission impossible! Having said this, sometimes something appears that is so amazing a snap shot of a certain period in time that you have to take note of it, what Keith Baugh, author of ‘Early New York Subway Graffiti 1973-1975: Photographs from Harlem, South Bronx, Times Square & Coney Island’ and artist in his own right, has in his photo archives it just that. In graffiti what was there yesterday may be gone today… Things ‘get gone’ over, buffed, destroyed by weather and in the case of trains, move around. Photos are all that there is for most of us and photos of the old school of New York are rare and sought after things, it is 100% certain that none of the pieces on the photos of this book exist any more and never will again, but on the pages of this book they still run and their power echoes through the countless following pieces in time. We caught up with Keith to blow a few cobwebs off of his memories and ask him a few questions.

All those years ago, what drove you to take the photos of the NYC subway trains and how did you come to take these shots?

Well, I guess I had a good few Bob Dylan lyrics floating around my head when I landed in the USA in the early 1970s and I thought that being in New York City just might help put some of them into context. I needed to find out why ‘the all-night girls whisper of escapades out on the ‘D’ train’ and how come you can ‘hear the night watchman clicks his flashlight and ask himself if it’s him or them that are really insane.’ For good measure I wanted to know who was drawing ‘conclusions on the wall’ and how come ‘It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry…..’

Anyway, taking the subway into Manhattan after arriving at JFK in the summer of 1973, I observed a painted flash of colour on the train exterior before boarding what must have been one of the earliest total-wreck graffiti carriages on the New York Subway system. The subway car interior was carpet-bombed with broad black magic-marker tags covering every possible surface including the walls, the windows, the ceiling and even the advertising cards. The subway map had been hit with three overlapping tags rendering it unreadable. If you could focus past the scrawl of names on the glass panes the remaining view from the windows was totally obscured from the outside by spray paint. Above the clatter and the screech, as the carriage hurtled through the underground tunnels, from a blown-out speaker of a radio on the shoulder of a strap-hanging young dude, just on cue, Dylan howled that ‘something is happening here and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?’ This was a very potent and intriguing message of welcome to New York City from the graffiti writing kids of the ghetto.

After arriving at my destination, I stood and watched as the train departed on its journey uptown. I saw that the spray-can painting was not isolated to one carriage; the whole train had been hit by the graffiti writers. These incredible paintings on the subway cars had an immediate and powerful creative impact and one that I wanted to capture on film. Over the next couple of days I quickly found out that trying to photograph the graffiti from the underground subway platforms, using flash photography, attracted far too much unwanted attention and became more like an invitation to a mugging!　 An American friend suggested I travel uptown to the South Bronx to the elevated tracks of the New York Transit Authority to take photographs of the painted trains in daylight. After point-blank refusing to accompany me on this quest, his parting message to me was to ‘keep a sharp eye open for gang members of the Savage Skulls’.

Ha ha, shouldn’t laugh… I love the raw energy of the pieces from this era, what did you like and what attracted you to the pieces on the trains?

To my mind, these extraordinary early 1970s train paintings linked inextricably with a view of American culture that embraced and mythologised the rebel and the outlaw, from Bonnie & Clyde, Billy the Kid and John Dillinger to Brando’s sneering ‘what have you got’ when asked what he was rebelling against, to Dylan’s ‘the pump don’t work ‘cos the vandals took the handles.’ This outlaw mentality represents a resistance to oppressive authorities and a fearless independence. The subway train graffiti writing was an outsider art, an outlaw form of expression and a powerful cultural phenomenon.

Were you taking a lot of photos of other things at the same time?

I was particularly interested in roadside ephemera. This included billboards, hoardings, old neon signs and advertising paraphernalia, the kind of subject matter that had proved irresistible to anyone interested in American popular culture. Without doubt, New York City offered the ultimate visual experience and I was taking lots of photographs around Broadway, Times Square and Coney Island. The photographs would provide source material for many future paintings.

And what camera and type of film did you use?

I was on a steep learning curve using a new Nikon F2 with Kodachrome colour transparency film. At the time, the process of taking the photographs, the　being there, was more important than seeing the finished results; you could say that to enjoy the journey was more important than reaching your destination. Remember, this was decades before digital photography. You took the shots using 35mm film and sometimes waited weeks or months before getting the films processed. During this time you questioned yourself about having used the correct ISA setting, shutter speed, light reading and if you remembered to take off the lens cap.

Not being from NYC, did you know about the state of the NYC trains before you saw them first hand?

No, I hadn’t heard or read anything about this stuff before I arrived in New York. There was no expectation, no forewarning and as a result the impact of seeing the painted subway trains was that much greater.

So, what was your immediate and first response to seeing the painted trains? Did you think of what you were seeing as vandalism, art, a youth phenomenon or something else?

I still vividly recall the initial thrill and amazement on seeing this powerful artwork. The full impact, of course, was in seeing the trains in daylight from the elevated tracks. The spray paint colour was rich, fresh and bright in the strong sunlight and very recent attempts to clear the windows with some kind of solvent gave off a strong acrid smell that mingled with the warm metallic blast from the over-heated braking system. The graffiti was so extraordinary and unique that I muttered a few times under my breath ‘only in New York, only in New York.’ To my European eye this was an incredibly strong cultural phenomenon with the constant stream of writing on the passing trains providing an exotic visual mix of beat poetry, bebop, jive, pop art, jazz and Puerto-Rican funk… ‘Chico / Chico / Super Strut / Hondo / Sin / King / Silver Tips / Lil Hawk / Blade / Stoney Dice / All Jive / Stay High / Sky / Ale One / Soul Gag / Death / Kill / Mico / Mico and on and on.’

Did you witness any other responses to the graffiti from ordinary ‘strap hangers?’ Were people on the trains and platforms visibly paying attention to the pieces going past them?

It was impossible not to be aware of the train graffiti. If you had a ‘good for one fare’ token to ride the New York subway, the graffiti writing was in your face in every part of the city from Wall Street to Greenwich Village to Times Square. You saw this stuff in Brooklyn down at Coney Island and it was there to be seen at Rockefeller Centre and on the Upper East Side. However, for the majority of passengers waiting for the train on the underground platforms, you sensed that their number one priority was survival – a desire to get this ordeal over with as soon as possible.

Ok, so, you may not be the right person to be asking this of, but today it is often said that graffiti makes people feel unsafe as it is a sign of lawlessness and a lack of formal control, did people using the subways in NYC in the 1970s seem as scared of the paint as we are led to believe that people are today (I know that there were and, to a much lesser extent, still are some genuine reasons to be wary of the subway)?

I’m sure that the vast majority of travellers who used the New York subway in the 1970s absolutely hated the tags that covered the car interiors. It was an obvious ordeal. The carriages were over-heated, over-full and screechingly loud as they careened through unexpected underground curves and bends leaving you hanging onto the strap for dear life, eye-ball to eyeball with a potential psychopathic killer.

I remember that you once said to me that having a camera around your neck at that time was like having a security blanket. Logically though, it should have the opposite effect making you a target. How did this work?

I think this must have been the observation I made linked to a comment by Henri Cartier-Bresson, about the camera being his excuse to see the world and to justify his reason for being in a certain place. I could really appreciate this point of view. As a visitor to New York in the 1970s I would have been strongly advised against travelled uptown for whatever reason. With my camera I had an excuse to be in Harlem and the South Bronx, to see and to photograph the painted trains in daylight oblivious to the potential danger.

Did you draw attention to yourself by taking photos of what I assume others thought was the normal, the everyday?

Hanging around the elevated platforms photograph the graffiti writing, I recall various oddball characters, waiting for the downtown train, walking past and offering to enlighten me about Jesus, or asking if I wanted to buy any kind of drug or maybe a nice Rolex watch. A guy on the opposite platform shouted an impolite suggestion as to where I ought to stick the Nikon. I graciously declined all offers and decided to keep the camera hidden until the trains arrived, the platform cleared and then I started to click the shutter.

Do you personally have a favourite piece or writer from this period?

Two train paintings stopped me in my tracks. The first being the phenomenal carriage painting by King and Tracy photographed in 1975 that was taking graffiti writing up onto another level. The words ‘WILD STYLE’ painted in a caption box between the two names gave up some kind of clue. The difficult readability and camouflage of the lettering oozes confidence, quality and a phenomenal assurance in the use and control of the medium. My other favourite masterpiece was the stunning whole-carriage painting by Blade and John 150 with the painted eye on the carriage door. A piece of artwork that at the time equalled anything I had seen on gallery walls. A subplot of this piece is the intriguing later addition of ‘toy-Cliff159’ overwriting the name John.

Do you recall which names or crews you were seeing up the most?

I was aware of the code 3YB attached to a good number of the painted names and being totally mystified as to its meaning. It also registered early on that for the writers, getting your name up once wasn’t the point. I was seeing numerous hits by Vamm, Blade, IN, Ale-One, Ben 3YB, Staff 161, Cliff and others.

What other photographic opportunities did New York City offer you in the early 1970s?

I have included a series of my photographs in the book from Times Square, Broadway and Coney Island. I saw a direct correlation between the graffiti imagery on the subway cars and the giant letterforms on the hand-painted billboards, advertising signs and wall paintings in Times Square and the signs that adorn the world famous rides at Coney Island. This was the downtown playground for the kids from Harlem and the Bronx and I’m sure that this visually powerful advertising media imagery must have had a direct impact and subconscious influence on the young graffiti writers who produced the extraordinary spray-can painted names on the subway trains. I wandered around Coney Island during the height of summer and graffiti writing was conspicuous by its absence. The whole area had obviously been given a new lick of paint for the high season and I guess you can fool some of the people some of the time! The last photograph I’ve included in the book is a shot from the Coney Island boardwalk of a police bus with bars on the blacked-out windows and the words ‘PRISON ON WHEELS – STOP THAT CRIME YOU CAN’T WIN’ painted along the side. The New York authorities were well and truly on the case even in those early years.

You are an artist yourself; tell me a little about your own work.

Those visits to New York City in the 1970s had a major influence on my creative output. I got to see some early paintings by the photo-realist painters in New York at the Allan Stone Gallery and the OK Harris Gallery. Artists including Robert Cottingham, Ralph Goings, Robert Bechtle and Richard Estes exhibited paintings depicting city iconography - neon signs, American diners, movie marquees, Buicks and Cadillacs. I soaked up the subject matter that was all around me and with my　 photographs and sketchbooks as source material I headed back to England with an abundance of ideas that I developed over many years in an ongoing　 series of paintings 　My later paintings have depicted jazz and rock’n’roll musicians and more recently circus entertainers.

Personally I am grateful and feel lucky to have seen your photos, if you had your time again would you have taken more?

I was quite selective in choosing which masterpieces to record. I guess for every image I captured, I was watching another hundred names ride on by. I do recall seeing flashes of brilliant masterpieces on the side of the non-stop express trains that slowed down as if to stop and then flashed on past. Of course, if you could arrange to go back to that time with pro-digital camera equipment I would quite happily shoot every masterpiece on every train.

Ha ha, I’ll let you know whether I have a spare seat when the time machine arrives! How did you come about keeping the photos for so long? Were they forgotten and then rediscovered?

I was an art-teacher in London during the 1970s and I recall showing the subway graffiti slides to groups of appreciative art students, resulting in some of the earliest graffiti bombing around downtown Peckham. I remember thinking that this was potent stuff. I then filed away the transparencies and more or less forgot about them for thirty years.　

Three decades on, in 2005, I got to meet and work with London based writers and urban legends Tizer and Shucks. We had been talking awhile about graffiti writing in general and when Tizer mentioned the huge debt owed to the old school kings of New York　 Subway Graffiti, I remember saying, ‘Hey, I took loads of photographs of that stuff and I still have them stashed away somewhere!’ On seeing the photographs, both Tizer and Shucks recognised and pointed out to me the importance and rarity of these images.

Did you ever think that you’d do anything with the images and when did you realise their value?

Having been made aware that good quality photographs from the golden era of New York Subway Graffiti from the early to mid 1970s are relatively rare, I decided to produce a book which reflected the important social, historical and artistic status of the work. The book design is clean and crisp with mostly full-page photographic plates all uncropped from the original 35mm Kodachrome transparencies. The photographs show tags and early masterpieces by over 150 old school New York writers including Ale One, All Jive, Ben 3YB, Billy, Blade, Bug, Cash, Chico, Cliff, Comet, Crachee, Death, Doc Cool, Hondo, Hysen, In, Jet, Jump, King, Kool Kevin, Lava, Lefty, Mono, Nod, Phase 2, Priest, Riff-Raff, Roach, Ruben 118, Silver Tips, Sin, Sky, Sly, Spencer, Staff 161, Stay High, Stim One, Super Strut, Tracy 168, Vamm, Worm, Yaz etc. These are not just images from the history of graffiti, but from the history of art.

Are these the only photos of graffiti that you have taken or has your interest endured beyond this period in NYC?

My awareness of graffiti writing stretches way back to 1969 when the post-situationist group King Mob (including art student / activist and future Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren) hit the walls of my neighbourhood around Notting Hill in London with a graffiti blitz that included quotes from the romantic poets. I have included photographic reference to this in the book. I am still actively taking photographs on the streets and around the railroad tracks.

When is the street date for the book and where is it available?

All images contained within this interview are copyright of Keith Baugh - http://www.keithbaugh.com