BRONX SCENE
Henry Chalfant Dondi, 1980, 2013, 2013, Kodak Professional Endura Metallic Paper, 17h x 65h in. Photo courtesy of the Bronx Museum of the Arts
Bronx Museum upcoming exhibition of photos
BRONX TIMES REPORTER, S 52 EPTEMBER 6-12, 2019 BTR
The Waterfront NYC at Trump Golf Links will host Oktoberfest on Sunday, September
29. Photo courtesy of the Waterfront NYC
The Waterfront NYC
to host Oktoberfest
The Waterfront NYC will host
Oktoberfest on Sunday, September
29, from 1 to 6 p.m.
Dust off your lederhosen and
join in for their fi rst annual Oktoberfest,
featuring a live concert,
beer specials, food stations, ferris
wheel, yard games, and more.
Purchase tickets at www.thewaterfrontnyc.
com.
The Waterfront NYC is located
at Trump Golf Links at
Ferry Point, 500 Hutchinson
River Parkway.
The Bronx Museum of the Arts announces
Henry Chalfant: Art vs. Transit,
1977-1987, the fi rst U.S. retrospective
of the pioneering photographer, on view
from Wednesday, September 25, to Sunday,
March 8, 2020.
Recognized as one of the most signifi
cant documentarians of subway
art, Chalfant’s photographs and fi lms
immortalized this ephemeral art form
from its Bronx-born beginnings, helping
to launch graffi ti art into the international
phenomenon it is today. The
historic exhibition looks back at a rebellious
art form launched in the midst of a
tumultuous time in NYC history. Chalfant’s
graffi ti archives are a work of visual
anthropology and one of the seminal
documents of American popular
culture in the late 20th century.
Starting in the early 1970s, graffi ti
became a cultural movement, along
with hip-hop and breakdancing, created
by teenagers and young people
who used the infrastructure of the city,
its streets and subway cars, to circulate
their tags, murals, and radical visual
expressions. Through the lens of Henry
Chalfant, the public will be able to see
the now largely disappeared works of
legendary subway writers, including
Dondi, Futura, Lady Pink, Lee Quiñones,
and Zephyr, and Bronx legends including
Blade, Crash, DAZE, Dez, Kel,
Mare, SEEN, Skeme, and T-Kid.
Chalfant developed an immediate
interest in this burgeoning culture
when he moved to New York in 1973,
and began to explore the uptown stations
where the trains ran outside on elevated
tracks. By 1977, he had developed
a technique of capturing exposures in
rapid succession on his 35mm camera
from different positions on the platform,
documenting the entire train in
multiple, overlapping shots.
Henry Chalfant, Smily, Ebony
Dukes, BS119. Pod and others, Intervale
station on the 2’s and 5’s, The Bronx
(1979). Courtesy of Eric Firestone Gallery.
Curated by the world renowned
Spanish street artist SUSO33, Henry
Chalfant: Art Vs. Transit, 1977-1987 is
a long awaited homecoming that celebrates
a global art movement that was
born in the Bronx and upper Manhattan.
Chalfant’s subway car photographs
constitute the centerpiece of the exhibition—
life-sized prints of train cars
simulate the experience of a graffi ti
writer standing on the tracks and looking
up. These prints display the different
styles of graffi ti: from “burners” to
iconic full-car murals. In addition to the
monumental prints, over 100 of Chalfant’s
smaller photographs will also be
on display. The exhibition also includes
signifi cant and rare historical ephemera
from Chalfant’s personal archives,
as well as his more anthropological
photographs capturing the birth of the
hip hop movement. These include black
book drawings and outlines by subway
writers, objects from various art exhibitions
and hip hop shows, as well as over
200 photographs of icons like SEEN and
the Rock Steady Crew, along with lesserknown
DJs at park jams in the Bronx,
and graffi ti artists at the writer’s bench
on 149th street. Many of these artists
were mainstays at Chalfant’s SoHo studio
throughout the 1980s, where they
would browse through the photographer’s
photo albums, comparing their
works with their friends and rivals. A
section of the galleries will be transformed
into a recreation of Chalfant’s
studio. The installation will be paired
with a soundtrack of subway sounds, as
well as archival videos, including All
City (1983) and a video produced in 1982
by Kodak about Henry Chalfant’s technique
for capturing subway art. The
exhibition is produced in consultation
with Eric Firestone and Sacha Jenkins,
as well as additional advisors.
Starting out as a sculptor in New
York in the 1970s, Chalfant turned to
photography and fi lm to do an in-depth
study of hip-hop culture and graffi ti art.
One of the foremost authorities on New
York subway art, and other aspects of
urban youth culture, his photographs
record hundreds of ephemeral, original
artworks that have long since vanished.
His archive of over 1,500 photographs is
represented exclusively by Eric Firestone
Gallery, New York and East Hampton.
He co-authored the defi nitive account
of New York graffi ti art, Subway
Art (Holt Rinehart Winston, N.Y. 1984)
and a sequel on the art form’s worldwide
diffusion, Spray Can Art (Thames
and Hudson Inc. London, 1987). Chalfant
co-produced the PBS documentary,
Style Wars, the defi nitive documentary
about Graffi ti and Hip Hop culture and
directed Flyin’ Cut Sleeves, a documentary
on South Bronx gangs, in 1993. He
produced and directed Visit Palestine:
Ten Days on the West Bank in 2002. His
fi lm From Mambo to Hip Hop was featured
in the Latino Public Broadcasting
series, Voces in 2006-2007, and won an
Alma Award for Best Documentary.
The Bronx Museum of the Arts is
an internationally recognized cultural
destination that presents innovative
contemporary art exhibitions and education
programs and is committed to
promoting cross-cultural dialogues for
diverse audiences. Since its founding
in 1971, it has played a vital role in the
Bronx by helping to make art accessible
to the community and connecting with
schools, artists, teens, and families
through its robust education initiatives.
In celebration of its 40th anniversary,
the museum implemented a free admission
policy, supporting its mission
to make arts experiences available to
all. The museum’s collection comprises
over 1,000 modern and contemporary
artworks in all media and highlights
works by artists of African, Asian, and
Latin American ancestry, as well as artists
for whom the Bronx has been critical
to their development. Located on the
Grand Concourse, the museum’s home
is a distinctive contemporary landmark
designed by the internationally
recognized fi rm Arquitectonica.
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