All City Queens book by Syrup
Books about female graffiti writers are still very rare. I did my own work almost 10 years ago with Graffiti Woman, but this book is meanwhile after such a long time pretty outdated.
Now, Syrup from England added her own contribution to celebrate female graffiti art. A female graffiti writer herself, gives the book a true insight and you know what she is talking about. It took her two years to finalise this massive project and she spent a lot of heartbeat and money into this lovely project. But the result is worth seeing and all the hard work was fruitful and I am proud of her, that she realised this despite all the difficulties. I know from my own experience how hard it is to put books like this together.
The outcome is stunning and massive. Pure graffiti writing with a few figurative elements, but mostly name writing is shown here. A 200 pages thick softcover book, filled with many great names we already know like Lady Pink, Mickey, Claw and Miss17, Queen Andrea and Akit. Next to it we also find a great amount of unknown writers such as Ferkl (what a great name!!), Winkstyles, Kwim, Mymo, Tyles and many many more. Each artist is introduced with a little text and there are short interviews with heroines such as Claw, Lady Pink and Mickey.
Luisa Fernanda Hernández Herse contributed a good insight to the female graffiti movement in Mexico, that gave me some backgrounds I did not know as well.
Mostly individual artists find their way on the pages, but also international crews or projects such as the two team Illegally Blonde, the crews Stick Up Girls or Female Soul, the blog Gurls Love Vandal or the Few and Far projects are highlighted.
Sometimes I was surprised why the designer put not very good quality images on a two-page spread, which resulted in pretty blurry images that where blown up to two pages. This did not serve the quality and I personally would have made a rather different choice.
At the end I was missing some further information like websites, where to learn more about the artists or their websites, books or magazines that also deal with the subject of spray-painting women.
Overall a great book about street writing with many great influential graffiti writers from all over the world and finally someone took over this duty to go on, where I began almost 10 years ago and celebrates the amazing women in the graffiti movement. Thanks a lot Syrup for all your hard work.
You can get your copy here: http://www.allcityqueens.bigcartel.com/
All City Queens book by Syrup
All City Queens book by Syrup
All City Queens book by Syrup
Nicholas Ganz 