Watch A Brilliant Unearthed '70s Mini-Doc On The Culture & Legacy Of Graffiti In NYC
One quick survey across the vast steel & concrete landscape of NYC is all it takes to see the vestiges of its once lively and wildly thriving graffiti culture. Even without the hip-hop- pillar-status it's garnered in the ears following its bloom, graffiti remains one of the cornerstones of this city's mid-70s renaissance, transforming concrete slabs and subway cars into elaborate and colorful proclamations of a new cultural identity. And while many of those canvases have been wiped clean, a recently unearthed BBC mini-documentary Watching My Name Go By from the mid-70s thoroughly chronicles the movement's sprawling influence at the time, providing a broad spectrum of perspectives on its proliferation, some scathing, others inspired, but all tantamount to understanding the role graffiti played at pivotal moment in the city's history and how its influence has projected over the decades since. Little is known about who's responsible for the piece, but the good people at Gothamist can at least be credited for putting us on, and that certainly doesn't mean you can't take 25-minutes out of your night to sit back and soak it up. You can also check out Norman Mailer's book on graffiti by the same name to further your frame of reference. Lay your eyes upon Watching My Name Go By below to experience the bombed-out baby photos of hip-hop and the city that birthed it.
