Henry Chalfant (born January 2, 1940) is an American

photographer A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographe ...

and videographer most notable for his work on

graffiti Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...

breakdance Breakdancing, also called breaking or b-boying/b-girling, is an athletic style of street dance originating from the African American and Puerto Rican communities in the United States. While diverse in the amount of variation available in ...

, and

hip hop culture Hip hop or hip-hop is a culture and art movement that was created by African Americans, Latino Americans and Caribbean Americans in the Bronx, New York City. Hip hop culture is characterized by four key elements: rapping, DJing and turntablis ...

. One of Chalfant's prints is held in the collection of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in New York City.

Education and career

Chalfant is a graduate of

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, where he majored in classical

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

. Starting out as a sculptor in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in the 1970s, Chalfant turned to photography and film to do an in-depth study of hip-hop culture and graffiti 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 art works that have long since vanished. His photographs have appeared in exhibitions of graffiti art from its early appearances in ''New York/New Wave'' at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center to retrospectives such as ''Art in the Streets'' at the

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's o ...

and ''City as Canvas: Graffiti Art From the Martin Wong Collection'' at the

Museum of the City of New York A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

, in addition to galleries and museums in the United States, Europe, and Asia. In 1983, Chalfant co-produced the

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

documentary ''

Style Wars ''Style Wars'' is an American 1983 documentary film on hip hop culture, directed by Tony Silver and produced in collaboration with Henry Chalfant. The film has an emphasis on graffiti, although bboying and rapping are covered to a lesser extent ...

'', the seminal documentary about graffiti and hip hop culture. Among Chalfant's other films are ''Flyin' Cut Sleeves'', a documentary about Bronx street gang leaders in the 1970s and ''Visit Palestine: Ten Days on the West Bank'', based on his visit to the occupied territories in 2000. His 2006 documentary ''From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale'' chronicles two generations who grew up on the same blocks of the Bronx, NY, using rhythm as their form of rebellion—for the older generation of the 1950s it was the rhythms of Cuba; for their children of the 1970s it was the rhythms of rap. The film was featured in the

Latino Public Broadcasting Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB) is a non-profit organization that is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with the purpose of addressing issues of cultural significance to the Latino population in the United States The Un ...

series Voces in 2006-2007, and won an

Alma Award The American Latino Media Arts Award or ALMA Award, formerly known as Latin Oscars Award, is an award highlighting the best Hispanic and Latino Americans, American Latino contributions to music, television, and film. The awards promote fair and ...

for Best Documentary. He has co-authored an account of New York graffiti art, ''

Subway Art ''Subway Art'' is a collaborative book by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, which documents the early history of the New York City graffiti movement. Originally published in 1984, the book has been described as a "landmark photographic history". ...

'', and a sequel on the art form's worldwide diffusion, ''Spraycan Art''. Chalfant has stated his influences are varied:

"In college my mentor was Charles Rowan Beye, the Greek scholar. I really didn't have a mentor for my art work, but I was influenced by great sculptors I admired like David Smith and
Eduardo Chillida Eduardo Chillida Juantegui, or Eduardo Txillida Juantegi in Basque (10 January 1924 – 19 August 2002), was a Spanish Basque sculptor notable for his monumental abstract works. Early life and career Born in San Sebastián (Donostia) to P ...
. For visual
anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
, I was influenced by the ethnographic filmmaker,
Jean Rouch Jean Rouch (; 31 May 1917 – 18 February 2004) was a French filmmaker and anthropologist. He is considered one of the founders of cinéma vérité in France. Rouch's practice as a filmmaker, for over 60 years in Africa, was characterized b ...
."

Chalfant continues to preserve and archive past work, make documentary films, and mentor other filmmakers' work through Public Art Films, a non-profit organization "dedicated to producing films and videos about grassroots cultural expressions."

''Henry Chalfant's Big Subway Archive''

On June 29, 2012, Chalfant released ''Henry Chalfant's Big Subway Archive'' as a 200-page book. Produced by Chalfant and Max Hergenrother, it is the first volume of a multi-volume archive comprising his entire collection of subway graffiti photographs. The archive series was renamed Henry Chalfant's Graffiti Archive: ''New York City's Subway Art and Artists'' in 2013. The

e-books An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...

are published by Sleeping Dog Films, which primarily archives the photographer's over 800 photos of

New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October 2 ...

graffiti. Each book in the series concentrates on a particular group or groups of graffiti artists, with an introduction by Chalfant giving background on the time and place in which the artists worked. These passages also contain non-subway-car photos of the artists or their neighborhoods as well as video interviews with the featured artists. The pictures of the subway cars are actually multiple photos overlapped to show the entire length of the subway car at a direct ninety degree angle. The first three volumes of the series have been released. Volume 1, ''CYA and TVS'' published June 29, 2012; CYA stands for "Crazy Young Artists" and TVS stands for "The Vamp Squad." Volume 2, ''Rolling Thunder Writers and Soul Artists'', published December 7, 2012. Volume 3, ''TC5 featuring Blade'', published July 1, 2013; "TC5" stands for "The Crazy Five" or "The Cool Five." The series has received generally positive critical support and has generated mild controversy for some interview material, such as graffiti artist

Lady Pink Lady Pink, born Sandra Fabara (1964), is an Ecuadorian-American graffiti and mural artist. Early life Fabara was born in Ambato, Ecuador in 1964 and moved to the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York when she was seven years old. She grew up ...

's assertion that "The graffiti movement has become a greater thing than the Renaissance." The series also sheds new light on some historical graffiti feuds such as Seen TC5 versus Seen UA.

Exhibitions

*A-Dieci Gallery (1970), Padua *14 Sculptors Gallery (1973), New York *Sculptors Guild, Lever House (1974), New York *

Three Rivers Arts Festival Three Rivers Arts Festival is an outdoor music and arts festival held each June in the Downtown district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The festival features live music and performance art, as well as visual art and vendors who sell their wares. The ...

(1977), Pittsburgh *O.I.A. (1977) Battery Park, New York *55 Mercer Gallery (1978), New York *''New York/New Wave'' (1981) P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York *

Sculptors Guild Sculptors Guild, a society of sculptors who banded together to promote public interest in contemporary sculpture, was founded in 1937. Signatories to the original corporation papers (Sculptors Guild, Inc.) were Sonia Gordon Brown, Berta Margoulie ...

(1981) Bronx Botanical Garden, New York *Elaine Benson Gallery (1981) Bridgehampton, New York *''The Comic Art Show'' (1983) Whitney Downtown, New York *''Content, a Contemporary Focus 1974-1984'' (1984)

Hirshhorn Museum The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was desi ...

, Washington, D.C. *''Since the Harlem Renaissance: 50 Years of Afro-American Art'' (1985)

Bucknell University Bucknell University is a private liberal arts college in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1846 as the University at Lewisburg, it now consists of the College of Arts and Sciences, Freeman College of Management, and the College of Engineering ...

, Lewisburg *''Hip Hop: A Cultural Expression'' (1999)

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF), sometimes simply referred to as the Rock Hall, is a museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and othe ...

, Cleveland *''Art of the American Century Part ll'' (1999)

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

, New York *''Urban Mythologies'' (1999)

Bronx Museum of the Arts The Bronx Museum of the Arts (BxMA), also called the Bronx Museum of Art or simply the Bronx Museum, is an American cultural institution located in Concourse, Bronx, New York. The museum focuses on contemporary and 20th-century works created by ...

, New York *''Hip Hop'' (2000)

Museum of Pop Culture The Museum of Pop Culture or MoPOP is a nonprofit museum in Seattle, Washington, dedicated to contemporary popular culture. It was founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2000 as the Experience Music Project. Since then MoPOP has organized ...

, Seattle *''Born in the Streets'' (2009)

Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain The Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, known simply as the Fondation Cartier, is a contemporary art museum located at 261 boulevard Raspail in the 14th arrondissement of the French capital, Paris. History The Fondation Cartier was cr ...

, Paris *''Art in the Streets'' (2011) Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles *''Moving Murals'' (2014)

City Lore City Lore: the New York Center for Urban Culture was founded in 1986 and was the first organization in the United States devoted expressly to the "documentation, preservation, and presentation of urban folk culture." Their mission is to produce pr ...

Gallery, New York *''City as Canvas: Graffiti Art From the Martin Wong Collection'' (2014) Museum of the City of New York *''1980'' (2016) Eric Firestone Loft, New York *''Art Is Not A Crime 1977-1987'' (2018) CEART Fuenlabrada, Madrid *''Henry Chalfant: Art vs. Transit, 1977-1987'' (2019) Bronx Museum, New York Chalfant's solo exhibitions also include Maharishi (2002), London; Prosper (2002), Tokyo; Galerie Speerstra (2003, 2006), Paris; Iguapop (2004), Barcelona; Montana Colors (2006), Barcelona; and Cox 18 (2006), Milano.

Personal life

He married actress

Kathleen Chalfant Kathleen Ann Chalfant (née Bishop; born January 14, 1945) is an American actress. She has appeared in many stage plays, both on Broadway and Off-Broadway, as well as making guest appearances on television series, including the '' Law & Order'' ...

(née Bishop) in 1966. They have two children: David Chalfant, a record producer and bass player for the folk-rock band

The Nields The Nields is a folk-rock band that started in 1991. As a five-piece band, they toured much of the United States, performing with artists such as Dar Williams, Moxy Früvous, 10,000 Maniacs, Ani DiFranco and Catie Curtis and appeared at many folk f ...

; and Andromache Chalfant, a set designer. The Chalfants live in Brooklyn Heights.

Collections

Chalfant's work is held in the following public collection: *

, New York City: 1 print ("Children of the Grave, Part II")

References

External links

*
Style Wars: The Original Hip Hop Documentary
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Chalfant, Henry 1940 births Living people People from Sewickley, Pennsylvania American photographers Graffiti and unauthorised signage