- [News Anchor] What some call art,
police say is a crime.
- Suddenly one man's vandalism
is another man's masterpiece.
- Graffiti is everywhere.
- [Josef] Today, graffiti is interwoven in the fabric
of mainstream culture, from fine art, to fashion,
to music, even corporate advertising.
But when the modern graffiti movement was started
as an illegal expression of rebellion by teenagers,
few realized it would explode into a larger
cultural phenomenon.
I wanted to get to know the graffiti writers
of New York City, and specifically the women writers,
who are often overlooked,
in what is notoriously a male-dominated space.
Women pioneers have been involved
in New York City's graffiti scene since the beginning.
And today, a new generation of writers
are bringing graffiti into the future,
and ensuring that its foundations are not forgotten.
- [Josef] New York City has a storied history
with graffiti.
Hip-hop was born here during the 1970s,
and graffiti became one of the original elements of hip-hop.
Today you can find this art form all across the city,
from building walls, to subway tunnels.
Some of it is sanctioned legally
by the owners of the buildings.
And some of it is defiantly thrown up without permission.
Growing up in Florida I saw some graffiti,
but I never thought much about who made it, or why.
Since moving to New York,
where graffiti is almost everywhere,
I've gotten more curious about who made these marks,
how long have they been here,
and what's their story?
- [Josef] The first artist I met is Ming,
an up-and-coming writer from Queens.
She invited me to meet a crew of fellow women writers
called GW2, as they worked on a new wall in the Bronx.
So who's here, who got the invite?
- [Ming] Okay, so Kaylove was friends with the owners
of this restaurant La Masa,
so then she just hit us all up on group chat.
These are women that welcomed me
into their existing community that they had six years ago.
So I wouldn't have been able to continue painting,
and never would've benefited from this whole community,
like, had it not been for people like these women,
who opened up a space in their circle,
you know what I'm saying?
For friendship, you know, which I think is very rare
as you get older, you know?
So Kay brought Jai together,
and then we all know other women.
So Erotica is here, Scratch is here.
- [Josef] This is Kaylove, who organized the crew,
and is a first-generation Puerto Rican American,
born and raised here in the Bronx.
- Most of the walls, they are given to guys, and...
or street artist, a street artist would get a wall quicker
than a graffiti artist.
- [Josef] Right. - Like if you approach
a store owner, and be like,
"I'm a street artist, let me do a mural,"
they'll be like, "Yeah."
But if you say, "I'm a graffiti artist,"
they'll be like, "Mm."
- What do you think people commonly most
misunderstand about graffiti?
I mean, I think the big one that you mentioned
is like, street art versus graffiti,
I think a lot of people kind of think of those as-
- Yeah, they kind of- - the same thing.
- think of it all together now.
I just did a workshop at Feldstein High School, right?
When I asked them what graffiti was,
they went into their phones into Google,
to give me the answer.
I'm like, "You guys don't know what graffiti is?"
You know, so then they started talking about street art,
and I said, "That's not graffiti," I said,
"'cause if it doesn't have lettering, it's not graffiti."
- [Josef] Yeah. - Like all of us
can rock this wall without doing any lettering,
it won't be graffiti. - Right.
- It'll just be a street art mural.
And an old school graffiti artist would tell you
that it's not even called graffiti,
they won't even consider themselves a graffiti artist.
They will consider themselves a writer.
- [Josef] Right. - 'Cause the essence
of graffiti was just writing your name.
- [Josef] People have been writing on the walls of buildings
and caves since ancient times, but contemporary graffiti,
as we know it, didn't start until the 1960s.
(funky music)
To get started with my graffiti history lessons,
I turned to some writers who've been tagging
across the boroughs for decades.
Ming introduced me to one of her mentors, Sade TCM,
an OG writer who got a start bombing around the Bronx.
- Back in the days in the Bronx growing up, you know,
before hip-hop was called hip-hop,
you had these things that were going on.
People were DJing, MCing, break dancing,
graffiti was going on.
And so I gravitated towards the graffiti.
- [Josef] When hip-hop was born in the Bronx
during the 1970s, graffiti became one of the four
founding elements of hip-hop culture,
alongside MCing, DJing, and B-boying.
(funky music)
But contemporary graffiti itself started
in the neighborhoods of Philadelphia,
as early as 1965, with a teenager named Cornbread.
By 1968, the graffiti movement spread
into the streets of New York City.
- So by the time I came along '77, '78, '79, you know,
it was pretty much the norm, it was everywhere.
You name it, from your hallways, to buildings,
to streets, mailboxes, the trains, just everywhere.
- The Bronx was one of the the poorest counties
in old New York, lots of projects,
and all that kind of stuff.
You know, there was a lot of burned buildings,
that was during the era when pretty much
the Bronx was burning down,
landlords were burning their buildings, you know,
to get the insurance money and things of that nature.
- [Josef] During the 1970s, New York City was bankrupt.
Fire stations were shuttered,
and fire inspections were cut by 70%.
(sirens)
Fires were common across Brooklyn and the Bronx.
And the Bronx, specifically, 80% of housing
was lost to burning, displacing 250,000 people.
- And so it was kind of like a dilapidated environment.
There wasn't a lot of sources of self-esteem
to make you feel good about yourself, you know?
But when you're in that environment,
you kind of become desensitized to it.
And so we made the best of what we had in that time.
- Could you talk a little bit from your history,
why you think there's such few women doing graffiti?
- I mean, I think originally these...
it's just because it was a male-dominated sport, right?
It's just like baseball, basketball, football, you know,
CEOs of companies, no matter the discipline,
the idea and the gender roles bled right over, right?
So initially, there weren't that many female writers,
but there were: Barbara and Eva, you know, '62,
you know, after them, you know, Lady Pink came along.
(funky music)
- [Josef] Lady Pink got her start in 1979,
proving at only 15 years old that she was as good
as the best of the boys.
- [Lady Pink] And at the age of 15, I started writing
graffiti, and I was introduced into the New York City
subway trains, and the excitement,
and thrills of vandalizing those.
And that was my opening into the world of art.
The very first piece that put me on the map, per se,
was the very first time I went to go paint a subway train
with a bunch of guys.
They took me to some place in Brooklyn,
and had me doing my name on the train,
while a bunch of them are standing
and looking over their shoulder at me.
As if it's not scary enough to be standing
on the train tracks, bunch of guys staring at me,
I'm trying to do straight lines, and...
But when I achieved it,
and I got it done, from beginning to end,
that put me on the map.
And the guys were like,
"Yeah, yeah we gotta give her respect."
- [Josef] Trains, like the ones Lady Pink and Sade TCM
tagged in the early days, became the go-to moving canvases
for early graffiti, because it allowed the work
to be seen across the whole city.
This led to the Style Wars, where graffiti writers
would create elaborate pieces in order to become famous.
- [Sade] You know, it was about getting your name out there,
and getting getting that fame,
that recognition from your peers.
- [Josef] During the 1970s, New York City's mayor,
Ed Koch, responded to the growing graffiti movement
by introducing anti-graffiti laws.
The government fought against graffiti
by cleaning up subways,
even unleashing dogs to attack taggers.
- [Josef] By the mid 1980s, the city was succeeding
in eradicating graffiti from its train system.
Many taggers moved from the trains to building rooftops.
This time became known as the die-hard era.
But by the time the crackdown happened,
the graffiti movement had spread around the world,
becoming a global phenomenon.
(funky music)
Because of the aggressive and macho culture
of graffiti, women not only had to act extra tough
to be included, they were also at extra risk
of being hurt or abused.
- But I also knew how the game was; very male-dominated.
- [Josef] Yeah. - And abusive to females
or girls who want to write.
They find a male artist, and the guys are like,
"Yeah, take you underneath the wing,"
but it's all for the bad...
the wrong intentions.
- [Josef] Right.
- [Kaylove] So it is hard, a lot of times,
I just did stuff solo, or just with one or two people.
As a girl, you just gotta be tough.
- Men do dominate, you know, the graffiti world,
still do, you know?
I think that the difference is that there's not a lot
of females that actually own walls, you know,
to put something like this together, you know what I mean?
- [Josef] Yeah. - That you don't see a lot.
- [Josef] After they finished the wall in the Bronx,
Ming took me to Queens to meet another mentor.
Jerms is a graffiti writer,
who also spins under the name, DJ JS-1.
- [Jerms] Hey, come here.
Just try to spray the line right across this.
There you go, yeah, yeah, not bad, not bad.
Here, you can just make a line anywhere in there.
- [Jerms] See, that's not a bad line.
- [Josef] Just laying close, laying close.
- [Jerms] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [Josef] Both Ming and Jerms are from Queens,
and Ming was able to secure this legal wall,
in the neighborhood she grew up in,
for the two of them to paint together.
(mellow piano)
Over the years, Queens and the other boroughs have changed,
as developers have moved in,
and white-washed certain neighborhoods.
Probably the most famous instance of this
is the notorious 5 Pointz, which was a sanctuary
for graffiti artists to do legal pieces,
curated by a graffiti writer named Meres One.
- [Jerms] Now, when Meres took over, like,
he really went all out, and he treated the place
kind of like an outdoor gallery, and it was fantastic.
They would do concerts in the loading dock area,
bringing DJs, there'd be people break dancing and stuff.
Over time, that grew so big,
where it was like a tourist attraction.
The owner wanted to knock down the building,
and put up two towers with a bunch of condos.
A federal judge told the owner of the building-
- Yeah. - "It's your building,
you're allowed to knock the building down,
stop it being landmarked, it's fine.
However, give the artist 60 or 90-day notice
that you're going to be destroying their artwork.
If there's anything that they could come
and salvage out of there, that they want to take,
let them take it.
They wanna do new updated photos or whatever of it.
You gotta just give them a warning that you're gonna do it,
and then you're allowed to do it."
A couple nights later, he hired some guys,
and they just went and splashed white paint
over all of the artwork on the building.
- [Josef] The artists sued the developer, and won;
their work was legally protected,
just like any other fine art would be.
- [Josef] The graffiti community today looks a lot different
than it did in its early years.
And although the world of graffiti hasn't always been
welcoming to women, mentorship between women writers
has played an integral part
in expanding the legacy of graffiti.
- Since the 1990s, new women have been appearing
all over the world, and girls are being made
stronger and braver, and just as reckless as the boys.
We have a a sisterhood going on around the world,
and we support each other and love each other.
And absolutely, it's happening because of the lack
of support that some of them have from their own boys.
- And it's a support system that we need, you know,
especially in in these streets right now,
it gets a little crazy.
- For the young women that watch this,
and are inspired by what you guys are doing,
do you have anything that you'd like them to know?
- No matter what anyone tells you, just put your heart
and your soul into it, and don't wait for people.
- [Josef] Yeah. - Don't ever wait for people,
take the initiative yourself.
It's a beautiful art form, it's something that could give
you a long-lasting career.
And it's not an art form just for people
who just wanna be down with it, you know?
- [Josef] Yeah. - It's something that
you live and you breathe, you know?
But graffiti's everlasting, graffiti will never die.
- [Josef] Yeah. - If we wind up going to Mars
there'll be someone bombing Mars, believe you me.