GRAFFITI A NEW YORK – Andrea Nelli

Andrea Nelli was in his twenties when he went to New York for the first time. He saw COCO 144, SUPER KOOL 223, BIG-O 116, EVIL ERF 14, RAT FINK 131, Willie 182, written on the walls. In the beginning he thought of them as strange ideograms but he was even more fascinated to find out that the inscriptions were actually names. He decided to archive this phenomenon by taking pictures and to make it the subject of the thesis for his degree on Literature. He got in touch with many cliques of writers that open him the doors of New York.

In 1978, GRAFFITI A NEW YORK was published the first time in a small softcover edition. It was almost forgotten, but forty years after Nelli’s first visit to New York, the book was rediscovered, translated into English, and reissued in 2012 by the Italian publisher Wholetrain Press.

In addition to the original text, there are over 100 historic photographs by the author that show arguably the most important phase in the evolution to classic graffiti. And making the book GRAFFITI A NEW YORK a real gem about graffiti in its early birth years.

190 pages, 17 cm x 25 cm, hardcover
Language: English
Release date: 2012
Publisher: Wholetrain Press