When Henry Chalfant sees ads on the sides of today’s subway trains, he often mistakes them for the graffiti he used to photograph in the 1970s and ‘80s.
“I think, ‘Oh my God, window down,’” he tells The Post, using the phrase for graffiti done underneath subway car windows...
On the busy thoroughfare of the Grand Concourse in the South Bronx stands a contemporary building resembling origami. Home to the Bronx Museum of the Arts, this cultural institution offers the Bronx and Greater New York City seasonal exhibitions and an impressive permanent art collection...
When Henry Chalfant arrived in New York City from suburban Pittsburgh in 1973, as an aspiring sculptor, he found a place teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. This was “Ford to City: Drop Dead” New York. But amid the turmoil a new form of art making was taking shape — one that took up space where it could, which was mostly everywhere...
No photographer has documented the emergence and development of street art and hip-hop culture as honestly as Henry Chalfant did. One of the foremost authorities on the New York subway art and other aspects of urban youth culture, his photographs and films immortalized hundreds of ephemeral, original artworks that have long since vanished. These archives remain a remarkable work of visual anthropology and one of the seminal documents of American popular culture in the late twentieth century...
