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Henry Chalfant
Henry Chalfant (born January 2, 1940) is an American photographer and videographer most notable for his work on graffiti, breakdance, and hip hop culture.
One of Chalfant's prints is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Chalfant is a graduate of Stanford University, where he majored in classical Greek. Starting out as a sculptor in New York City 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 and City as Canvas: Graffiti Art From the Martin Wong Collection at the Museum of the City of New York, in addition to galleries and museums in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
In 1983, Chalfant co-produced the PBS documentary Style Wars, 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 series Voces in 2006-2007, and won an Alma Award for Best Documentary.
He has co-authored an account of New York graffiti art, Subway Art, 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. For visual anthropology, I was influenced by the ethnographic filmmaker, Jean Rouch."
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Henry Chalfant
Henry Chalfant (born January 2, 1940) is an American photographer and videographer most notable for his work on graffiti, breakdance, and hip hop culture.
One of Chalfant's prints is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Chalfant is a graduate of Stanford University, where he majored in classical Greek. Starting out as a sculptor in New York City 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 and City as Canvas: Graffiti Art From the Martin Wong Collection at the Museum of the City of New York, in addition to galleries and museums in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
In 1983, Chalfant co-produced the PBS documentary Style Wars, 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 series Voces in 2006-2007, and won an Alma Award for Best Documentary.
He has co-authored an account of New York graffiti art, Subway Art, 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. For visual anthropology, I was influenced by the ethnographic filmmaker, Jean Rouch."
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