Craig Castleman’s Black & White Archive

In 1978 Craig Castleman worked as an English teacher at the Manhattan High School of Art and Design. Together with his students he started working on a publication on the topic they were most interested in: New York subway graffiti. The outcome was a small run publication called NASTY STUFF. It focused the work of graffiti writers and experiences he made taking photos and diving deeper into the local scene. The known ethnologist Margaret Mead pushed him to further investigate the topic which lead to the finalization (1979) and publication of his doctoral thesis in 1982: Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York. To this day Getting Up might be the most important scientific work in the field explaining the social and cultural circumstances and rules of namewriting. Antagonists like the MTA or the transit police are part of the content as well as first attempts to establish graffiti in the art world.

In 2019 Castleman donated his archive to the Spanish associations INDAGUE and Contorno Urbano. After a successful crowdfunding campaign in 2025 the publishers did put together three publications aiming to honour his research and making material accessible that slept in Castleman’s archive for over 40 years: NASTY STUFF, Levantarse otra vez and Black & White Archive.

The 64-paged softcover booklet is a collection of photos Castleman took while investigating the phenomenon, shots writers provided to him and a few from other photographers. They cover the late 1970s and early 1980s and spotlight the New York namewriting scene with atmospheric cityscape shots, inside tags, station shots, outside tags, throw-ups, posing writers, photos from barb wired yards, but also iconic cars from LEE or the The Retakin’ of Pelham123 end-to-end.

In never before published photographs you can find works from SONIC, ZEPHYR, BS119, MARC, KID PANAMA, KRAZY, DUEL, CHI193, DEVO, INCA, IZ THE WIZ, CAP, BLADE, CODE7, PJAY, SEEN, MITCH77, DAZE, DURO, DUSTER, and others. We recommend getting all three titles to complete your collection of important New York namewriting publications. These are real must-haves!

64 pages, 14,8 x 21 cm, zine
Language: Spanish/English
Release date: June 2026
Publisher: INDAGUE & Fundación Contorno Urbano