I have long been fascinated with Graffiti and the derelict buildings where it’s common to experience “Aerosol Art” as it is affectionately referred too.

       I began and 18 month attraction to 5Pointz, an abandoned 250,000 sq. ft 4 story building where “taggers” regularly came from all over the world in the hopes of a meeting to thumbnail their idea with Meresone, the self appointed curator / organizer and world class graffiti artist who began 5 Pointz some twelve years earlier. The name 5 Pointz symbolizes the coming together of the 5 boroughs of New York City for the purpose of an outdoor “art center”.

       It didn’t take too long for me to recognize the power of the brightly colored graffiti could be when captured via large film cameras and portrayed in wet process Silver Gelatin photographs. The combination of sweeping curves in concert with random diagonals makes for a visual melody of grey tones.

       I became fascinated with the colorful weeping shapes and how they were integrated with the physical features of the warehouse.  I returned many times to photograph the ever changing face of 5 Pointz and have amassed over 40 compositions of juxtaposition works of art in conjunction with the symmetry of the abandoned warehouse, garage doors, street light poles, fire escapes, vent stacks and even the dozen or so steel upright girders which support the over head tracks of the # 7 train, virtually everything is covered with graffiti including large portions of the sidewalk and even the curbs !

       I became enough of a regular on Sundays amongst scores of digital photographers that I developed a relationship with Meresone where we would talk about art and the unusual places it can be found. I brought some work down one day to seek out Meresone’s opinion as I began to have doubts about whether I was plagiarizing other artist’s work. Meres offered that the portrayal of the colored graffiti in black and white intertwined with the physical features of the building in concert with the limitations of my own art form made for a unique art statement.

       Sadly, the developer who owns the building has finally won city approval to demolish the warehouse in favor of high rise luxury housing. Meresone and a small army of “taggers” did mount some opposition through court injunctions and restraining orders, to no avail in the end.   I was at 5 Pointz on Nov 17, 2013 making new work, little did I know that two days later under the cover of night and with a police presence the building’s owner would hire painters to “white washed” much of the Outdoor Art beginning at 3 am. I returned Friday the 22nd as a means to document what had taken place and will continue to monitor the building’s demise.  

        A year after the whitewashing the building was gone in late 2014, giving way to 1000 luxury apartments.  A group of artists lead by Meresone filed a lawsuit  (linked here) against developer Jerry Wolkoff.  In February 2018 the 21 artists joining in the lawsuit were awarded $6.7 million dollars for defacing their art. 

     An interesting personal anecdote took place one Sunday morning in April 2013. As the day wears on the amount of photogs increases dramatically and as you can imagine 99 % are digital shooters.  Yours truly ( 1% )  

      My Deardorff is setup exactly where you see it, much larger crowd of people, I am in a waiting mode for various things to happen.  I see this fella show up with his wife and some series D equipment, big lens, bag on the shoulder and nice pod.   I see him watching me and finally after some fore play he makes his way over to me and begins to chat.  Nice camera, how old, how large and so forth. I’m not too chatty as I know I am way out of my element with the equipment he has. Finally, he says, “don’t you think the D quality has equaled if not surpassed your film”?  He continues, “do you know how many Mega Pixels this Nikon has”? “No idea” I tell him, he says “36 Mega Pixels, you realize how much resolving power that is”?  (not in my cornflakes dude!)   Instantly I tell him “it’s got nothing to do with resolving power, it has everything to do with how film “accepts” light and can render to a much greater degree roundness and shape”  Blank look on his face, finally says “I’ve never heard it explained that way.”  He doesn’t know I know, but I now own him.

    Then, as if the Analog Gods were watching over this entire exchange, out of no where comes a little tiny man, (hot afternoon by now) easily 75 – 85 yrs old and dressed in a Winter sport jacket. As he approaches with wonderment in his eyes, without a word he comes around to the front of my camera, obviously knowing exactly where to look for the name plate and says “I knew it was Deardorff” !!! He continues, “I worked my whole life for Look magazine and we had 8×10 Deardorffs all over the studio, what a treat it is to still see one in use.”  I don’t recall if the D guy ever uttered another word as he just kinda of vanished!

   Each of my images were “captured” with a 1967 circa 5×7″ Deardorff view camera or a 7×17″ Phillips panoramic camera using Ilford film. The photographs were printed using a Split contrast printing technique using Ilford Warmtone or Classic paper. During the final archival processing steps each print is bleached in a combination of Potassium Bromide and Potassium Ferricyanide. This bleach process not only removes some very slight highlight detail, it also changes the molecular structure of the paper from Metallic Silver to Silver Sulphide which is considerably more stable and permanently archival. I try to bleach between 30 – 50 secs or till I just see the highlights begin to disappear.

   Thiourea is essentially a re developer which adds color after the bleaching process, the Thiourea is combined in varying amounts with Sodium Hydroxide to form the toner which “returns” warmth & tone to the bleached areas. After re fixing, the print is immersed in a Selenium Toner solution @ 1oz / 64 ozs. water, which enhances the lower values and strengthens the blacks. This extremely archival process is known as “Split Toning” and while the resulting color shift is difficult to predict the variations seem quite appropriate when applied to the variety of subject matter portrayed in the 5 Pointz graffiti portfolio.