1. GUERRILLA ART
Forget Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. Street art is where it’s at. Sure Warhol and Pollock were big in the ‘60s (okay their legends still live on) but these days we’re more interested in stencils, paint, oil brush, stickers, posters and airbrush from artists like UK’s Banksy or the graffiti-inspired street art pioneers Futura, Ramm:ell:zee and Blek le Rat. Guerilla Art takes care of this with interviews from international street artists – Banksy, Os Gemeos, Invader, Barnstormers, Futura, Ramm:ell:zee, WK Interact, Zevs, Blek le Rat, Andre, Noki and Eine – discussing their own work and the scene around them. Accompanying the book is a DVD showing some of the artists at work. And it wouldn’t be a street art book without big colourful pictures. *** BP
$45 published by Laurence King, distributed by Thames & Hudson

2. GRAFFITI WORLD
Graffiti World is what Jay Z is to hip hop – on top of the game. The mother of all graffiti books, Graffiti World has over 2000 photographs, comprehensive information on grafs history and insight into the worlds top graf writers (it’s even divided into alphabetical sections of America, Europe and The Rest Of The World). Did you know graffiti was derived from the Italian word ‘sgraffio’ meaning scratch? And in 1904 toilet graffiti was focused in a magazine for the first time. But we all know how it really started – on the streets of New York and Philly in the ‘70s. This weighty tome reflects the changes of early graffiti to new school graffiti, the direction it’s going in and a look at all the different types of expressions these artists use in the graffiti world. If you’re a bit of a novice with this street art business then this is the book for you. Get your bookworm on. ***** BP
$59.95 published by Thames & Hudson, distributed by Thames & Hudson

HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW
Welcome to the graf life

Someone had to capture the energy, creativity and originality of graffiti besides American photojournalist Martha Cooper. And that someone – make that someones – was husband and wife team Jim and Karla Murray. At a time when most children were playing with My Little Ponies, Transformers and Super Soakers, they were familiarising themselves with Pentax, Polaroid and Fuji film. Getting into photography at an early age saw the pair unite to capture the art they felt wasn’t being documented properly.

“We had ties in the graffiti world and began photographing artists’ work that we knew personally,” Jim says. “At that time (mid ‘90s), before digital photography became popular, many artists did not photograph their own work because they didn’t own a camera. After photographing some of their work, we became captivated by the art form and sought out more and more work to photograph.”

Graffiti first surfaced in America about 1960 and by the 1970s the movement moved to the walls and train panels of New York, headed by pioneers including Taki 183 and Lady Pink. It wasn’t long before graf started echoing the Ramones song title: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow. But anyone who appreciates graffiti knows it’s not always everlasting. And that’s the exciting thing for the pair – no two days in New York City are ever the same.
“The nature of graffiti art is such that it constantly changes as new art covers what had been there before. We would often return to the very same locations and see new artwork there.

“You can’t be lazy and say that you’ll come back tomorrow or another day because whatever you are photographing may not be there. We definitely learned that the hard way documenting graffiti.”
Even the pair’s work environment varies daily, from underground locations (subway tunnels) to overground locations (abandoned factories). An ever-changing location and a temporary art form hasn’t stopped them from excelling at their chosen field. They’ve had photographs exhibited in galleries throughout New York and Miami, along with photographs and articles appearing in Peel Magazine, Mass Appeal and Time Out New York.

Add books to their achievement stable – “Donna Karan bought many copies of Broken Windows, our first graffiti book” – and they’ve just completed Storefront: The Disappearing Face Of New York City. It’s a 10-year project that documents the aesthetics of different neighbourhoods and stores they encountered while on the graffiti hunt.
“Many neighbourhood stores had closed, or we would come across old stores, still in business, but somehow different. They were either refaced, remodelled, or original signage had been substituted with new, bright and shiny plastic awnings. The whole look and feel of the neighbourhood had changed and much of its individuality and charm had gone. The result was unsettling. We made it our mission to thoroughly document these stores. We set out with our 35 mm camera and micro-cassette recorder. After taking only a few pictures and speaking with only a handful of storeowners, we knew we had a compelling story.”

jamesandkarlamurray.com

NOW TRY THESE:
Broken Windows-Graffiti NYC (Gingko Press 2002)
Burning New York (Gingko Press 2006)
Storefront: The Disappearing Face of New York City (Gingko Press)
Graffiti Miami (Prestel, 2008)

RAP UP – THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO HIP HOP AND R&B
Cameron Lazerine and Devin Lazerine (Grand Central Publishing)
crumpets: * * * *
Rap For Dummys? Why, yes. A spin off from the American (where else?) bimonthly hip hop magazine Rap-Up, founded by the Lazerine brothers, divulges everything you ever wanted to know about your hip hop ABCs.

50 X 50
50 Cent (Simon & Schuster)
crumpets: * * * *
You’ll be about as excited as a kid in a, um, Candy Shop with this 50 Cent pop up book. The G-Unit mogul gives up his memorabilia for the book (albeit reproduced) including cute-ass photos of Fiddy as a juniour… word.

ADIDAS
Chen Jiaojiao (Edition Habit Press)
crumpets: * * *
Almost as good as a fresh pair of kicks itself… everything you ever wanted to know about the label that was headed by a German dude called Adi Dassler… no way.

SNEAKERS
Luo LV & Zhang Huiguang (Southbank Publishing)
crumpets: * * * * *
If you like Sneaker Freaker or own a copy of Sneakers: The Complete Collectors’ Guide then pick this up because lets face it – you can never have too many books on sneakers.

The Breaks: Stylin’ and Profilin’ 1982–1990
Photographs by Janette Beckman; texts by Bill Adler and Tom Terrell (Powerhouse Books)
crumpets: * * * *
It was 1982 when British music photographer Janette Beckman moved to the epicentre of all things cool: New York City. It was also around the same time that hip hop was slowly starting to explode – trains were covered in graf, boomboxes were blaring and DJs, MCs, b-boys, fly girls and graf writers were on the rise despite crew putting it down to a “fad”. Enter: The Breaks. The coolest book on the planet? Yes.