Interview with Henry Chalfant

H = Henry Chalfant
S = Spady

S: How did you see this Hip Hop world you entered when you came back from Barcelona, Spain? What was your initial reaction to the visual drama you witnessed on New York City’s subways?

H: My initial reaction, as an artist, was that it wasn’t initially an aesthetic thing, it was, “Who are these people?” It was not aesthetic to me yet because I didn’t yet cue into the different styles and the tags that I was seeing. It was a little while before I got the art part. At first, it was just, you know, “These are kids and they’re getting away with something, they’re taking on the city and they’re getting over and this is fun.”

S: Did the rebellious part of you – given your own previous background at Stanford – sort of kick in there, too?

H: Yeah, I think I had an alienated adolescence... My thing was hot rods, cars. That was my thing: the louder, the noisier they are, and the faster, the better. It was an outside culture and that attracted me then. And, it was, I guess, unresolved as I was heading into my middle age, it was still unresolved. Then Hip Hop came and graffiti kids were attractive to me because of that, in part, I think.

S: When did you pick up a camera then? You were sculpting. It’s one thing to be sculpting, but then to pick up a camera…

H: Yeah, it was something that at first – because I was a newcomer to New York – I didn’t know where I could take pictures at. I had not yet ridden out to the outer boroughs to see the graffiti. I didn’t know about that. It wasn’t until ‘76 that I picked up a camera. For years, I was observing it and watching it. Yeah, ‘cause I made sculpture, I was carving stone, so I needed a ground floor space or big industrial elevators. They were large abstract figures and you know, stone weighs 180 pounds a cubic foot, so you get something like this, already you’re 3,000 pounds. And so, I had a ground floor space and it was big – ,000 square feet – and so that’s where I worked. And I was happily working there. I had been doing sculpture throughout my time in Italy and in Spain and when I came back here I continued. It was a time in New York when a young sculptor could actually make something of it. And, immediately after I arrived, I met other people and we formed a gallery called Fourteen Sculptures Gallery. It’s actually still there and we’re the charter members of it. We had shows and, at the time, there weren’t that many galleries in New York compared to what there are now. You could actually get press coverage and get critics to come and all of that. So, it was a very inspiring time in the ‘0s. About the middle of the ‘0s, I began to doubt that that was what I really wanted to do. I was isolated in my studio most of the time. You know, you work in stone, you spend six months polishing it by hand and that’s comfortable, but not very interesting. And I didn’t feel like I was engaged with the world. So, around the same time, I found where the trains ran outside, I picked up my camera, and I started to take pictures of the graffiti.

S: When did you begin photographing?

H: ‘76.

S: When you were in Europe were you photographing things over there?

H: No.

S: This was your initiation rite as a photographer.

H: And of course, Martha Cooper always said, “Well, you’re not a real photographer. A real photographer never would have done that!” But, she has a point. She takes photographs of something happening in an environment. You know, the trains are going through, the people are doing something.

S: But you blocked it out.

H: I blocked it out because I was sitting and documenting this. And as a sculptor I had to use photography to do site proposals. I would photograph and splice the site around with the sculpture right in the middle and then panoramic shots around. So, when I was faced with this problem of seeing something actually on the center track in the Bronx and I wanted to get a picture of it and my problem was, “How?” So, I said, “Okay, I’ll just do this thing and splice it when I get home.” So, I did that and it looked good when I got it home. I said, “Oh, this really works.” So, I did that all the time instead of trying to find sites off the line like Marty did. I decided I would just do this right on the line.
S: So you actually became more stationary.

H: Yeah, I could stay in one spot and wait for the train.

S: What was Martha doing there? What did she say about what you were doing?

H: Well, Marty was a photo-journalist. So, she was taking a picture of reality and this was the reality that she was trying to capture. So, she would take the train and not just the artwork. She wasn’t just interested in the artwork, she was interested in the phenomenon. And this was the Bronx and this was what it looked like, you know. The train was coming through and it was painted. For her, it was about recreating as much as she could of the experience of actually seeing it. So, basically that’s the difference between her and me.

S: When did you and Marty come together?
H: I think the first time we met was when I had a show. It was before Common Ground. It was a photo show in 1980. And word got around because I had already met [graffiti] writers. and they knew about it. So, they told their friends and writers came from all over. I had heard about Marty. People said, “Hey, there’s this lady. She’s doing this, too.” I said, “Oh, okay.”

S: But now, when you actually began filming “Style Wars,” it wasn’t easy. It was dangerous doing that with cameras in your hand. Did you feel threatened at all? They never posed a threat to you, did they?

H: Once they did, but it was kind of a joke. I was walking by and – I understand Spanish – and one of them said to the other one as I was walking by, “That guy took your picture.” And I kept walking ‘cause I had the camera out and the guy who had heard this came up to me with all his boys behind him and said, “You took my picture.” And I said, “No.” He said, “Give me your fucking camera, I’m gonna break your fucking camera.” I said, “I didn’t take your picture,” and I quickly grabbed photos of all the graffiti I had and said, “This is what I was taking pictures of’.” They’re like, “Oh, oh.” So, he said, “Alright, but if I see my picture in the paper, you’re dead.” He didn’t mean it. That was my only run-in.

S: Could the film have been made had you not brought them down to your house?
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