JimandKarla

October 2007 - Press Release: " Authors James and Karla Murray have been photographing the streets of New York for years, publishing two bestselling books on the graffiti scene, Broken Windows and Burning New York, in the process. With the publication of "Storefront", the Murrays have turned their attention towards faithfully documenting the generations-old storefronts and shop windows of New York’s neighborhoods. Within the pages of "Storefront", the reader may explore entire blocks that have not changed much in the past century, engaging in startling encounter with contemporary New York. Details of an architectural and cultural heritage that is fast disappearing such as signage, architectural adornment, and window displays are presented in context, as they exist on the street, all in amazing detail. Between the collected interviews with the shop-owners, and photos from every nook and cranny of New York, "Storefront" is sure to evoke feelings of nostalgia in hardboiled New Yorkers, visitors and ex-pats alike." 270 Pages / Hardcover / Cloth Binding / 11 5/8” X 13" / 100's of large scale photographs / 8 Gate-folds each over 3 ft long / Gingko Press / ISBN 10: 1-58423-227-7 / ISBN 13: 978-1584232278/ $49.95Pre-order: www.amazon.com/Storefront-Disappearing-Face-Old-York/dp/1... More: www.urbanimagephotography.com/index1.htmAnd here: urbanimagephotography.com/cblog/index.php BURNING NEW YORK: Graffiti NYC cover "From the ashes of the 60s to the dust of Ground Zero, New York graffiti has magnetized and polarized, rocked and shocked. When the hot-eyed and restless ride the city's edge to turn dead walls into worlds of color, motion, and passion, Jim and Karla Murray capture their visions and voices with a fire to match. Don't blink." Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop BROKEN WINDOWS: Graffiti NYC reprint cover 2007BURNING NEW YORK in Juxtapoz February 2007 Manhattan NYC Freestyling is like rhyming. You've got to build a vocabulary, explains BISC in BURNING NEW YORK, Gingko Press' latest massive attack and sequel to BROKEN WINDOWS. The Murrays got together and photographed artists in action, and compiled a thesis' worth of interviews from New York's most notable writers. Many older artists assert the importance of knowing graffiti history, but they do differ in their approaches to things like freestyling, paint choice, and the teacher/student relationship. Much attention is given to the coining of a street name, the formation of a tag style, and the birth of the movement, the train. Comparisons are made between NY's focus on lettering and Europe's emphasis on background and characters. The book also includes sketches, a tribute to underground cartoon images of Vaughn Bode, and sections dedicated to female writers, battling, bombing, crews, fame, and styles. At the halfway point, the book commemorates murals painted in emotional response to 9/11. With the likes of PRIZ, POEM, ACB, DONA, MUCK, and CERN, may you never forget who started it all. -Cordelia ChadwickBURNING NEW YORK by James T. & Karla L. Murray (Gingko Press) Graffiti art evolved from simple monikers to large-scale multi-dimensional productions of visual expression for the sake of critique and entertainment. What remains constant throughout graffiti history is its function to reflect, the conscience and counter conscience of the neighborhood to the neighborhood, according to the authors of BURNING NEW YORK, a collection of wide-angle colorful photographs of the best large-scale murals painted in New York since 2000. The artists responsible for the work discuss history, style, expression and conflicts of the graffiti art world in the context of their experiences as individuals and members of crews. As a time capsule of urban life and world events, the art presented here reveals that some history books really are better expressed in pictures. (reviewer- Diane Feuer)BURNING NEW YORK by James T. and Karla L. Murray An essential coffee table accessory for any b-boy or girl, James T. and Karla L. Murray's BURNING NEW YORK takes readers on an exhaustive trip through the New York graffiti scene by way of colorful images and intimate, first-hand accounts from the writers giving life to the City's walls. By combining dynamic photos of genre-bending pieces with direct quotes from grizzled graf vets and fresh (albeit unseen) faces alike, the book, a sequel to the authors' 2002 offering, BROKEN WINDOWS, paints a detailed mural of the graffiti mecca's current scene. Throughout BURNING's 200-plus pages, the artists, who are at times pictured creating their work within the book, offer perspectives on everything from paint to the future of the art form. Other topics tackled include where writers find their inspiration and their role in the aftermath of September 11. Although graffiti addicts will dig the insider accounts this book serves up, its words will not be lost on casual fans. Author-provided introductions for each section will school graf novices on terms like tag (an artist's alias within the culture) and bombing (covering illegal and risky territory in relatively quick fashion). So whether you're a street Picasso with a wild style or simply someone who sees the activity as something more than vandalism, BURNING's worth checking. (Justin Lamb)BURNING NEW YORK James T. and Karla L.Murray Gingko Press See Burning New York on the shelves and think to yourself, Another graff book? and I wouldn't blame you. You might wonder which of the featured writers creates art for Sprite Remix advertising. Not to hate. It's a complex culture, full of sellouts and beefs between crews, hate for the old school and hate for the new school, condescension toward female writers, permissions pieces and etc. And perhaps this is the greatest success of Burning New York, outside of the fact that it collects some absolutely sick artwork from New York City walls. This multi-faceted exploration of the different elements of graffiti in the big city, offered through quotations from writers themselves, provides a comprehensive if not particularly deep understanding of graff. We learn that some artists are focusing less on lettering than on background, which points to European influences and makes graff more acceptable as art rather than vandalism, and we are told by some that graff that doesn't focus on the lettering is phony. We're told that the new school has no sense of history, and that the old school is a bunch of crotchety people who can't stop talking about when New York was cool. There's a section devoted to tags, in which writers talk about how they got their names; a section .. and caps that features a bunch of discussion about brands and colors; a section on Vaughn Bode, who's legacy lives on through his influence on old school writers like Zephyr and Dondi White, and through the work of his son, Mark; there is a section on female writers; a section on post 9-11 murals; and a section devoted to the black book and sketching, in which some of the writers discuss their insistence on predetermining their designs while others choose to freestyle. Finally there are declarations about the future of the movement. Photographers James T.and Karla L. Murray, in this follow up release to Broken Windows-Graffiti NYC (Gingko Press 2002), have presented not only their beautiful documentary photographic work, but also the paradoxical culture whose fruits they have documented. While some of the quotations could have stood a bit more editing, repetition and clumsiness can be excused as authenticity, and the stories and comments of the writers will stand as an interesting oral history of this point in time. The font size is a bit rough on the eyes, and after looking through the book for a few hours, the Hong Kong printing becomes evident as the spine begins to tilt to the right like an oft-read paperback. Still these cosmetic shortcomings can be corrected in future printings, of which there are sure to be a few.CAPTURING THE FACES OF A VANISHING CITY Photojournalists James & Karla Murray document the walls and buildings of NYC before they disappearBy Billy JamBefore Burning New York appeared last month—James T. and Karla L. Murray’s brand new book capturing New York City current graffiti art—much of its subject matter had already disappeared. Even the book’s vibrant cover depicting a wall by Doze Green (one of over 300 artists featured in the full-color, 200-page art book) off of Bedford Avenie in Williamsburg was gone. It, like so many of the book’s other pieces of street art, had been displaced in the name of development in a city that is in a rapid upscale flux.“So many pieces from the book are gone already ... It says a lot about a changing New York,” says Karla. She and her photojournalist collaborator/husband James, who have for the past decade been tirelessly taking photos on the streets of New York, have witnessed the city’s changes firsthand. Most of the street art in their first book, Broken Windows, which captured New York graffiti from 1996 to 2001, is long gone, but much more surprising is the fact that over half of the subjects of their appropriately titled next book, Counter/Culture: The Disappearing Face of New York City’s Storefronts are already gone—and the book won’t be out for several more months.“By the time the book comes out, the majority [of the storefronts] will have disappeared,” James somberly predicts. He points to a panoramic shot of a block of Bleecker Street near Sixth Avenue that was shot over the past six years. “Two-thirds of that block is already gone!”When the Murrays, driven by a passion to photograph graffiti, started shooting New York’s street art in the mid-’90s, they had no inclination of ever putting out a book, never mind a series of books documenting a vanishing side of the city. Almost by accident, they found themselves as photo-journal authors after wandering into a bookstore where the impressive layout of a skateboard book titled Dysfunctional (published Ginkgo Press), caught their eyes. They jotted down the Bay Area indie publisher’s address and mailed off some copies of their work the next day.Soon they had a book deal for Broken Windows—so titled “because of that whole ‘broken window’ theory and what was going on with Giuliani at the time,” explains Karla. The sequel, Burning New York, which documents NYC graffiti the following five years from 2001 up to 2005, inadvertently led to their book on mom and pop storefronts.“We’d be in these neighborhoods, especially in the Bronx and Brooklyn, that we had no earthly business being in, looking for graffiti in back alleys and along the tracks,” says Karla, laughing. “And then we’d start seeing these old stores, and they looked like they were part of a time capsule. So we started taking more and more pictures [of them], and when we could, we would take [photos of] the entire block because that’s what we are really interested in showing: a whole strip. Then we would go back a short time later to take more pictures, but we’d see that a Starbucks or Duane Reade had moved in and replaced the mom and pops.”Counter/Culture will offer sharp, engaging photos (all shot on film), including many wide-angle, fold-out, panoramic shots, complimented by interviews with the owners of the shops. Almost as much as the storefront photos, these interviews narrate the history of New York as seen through the eyes of a small business owner. Take, for example, Catherine Keyzer, the sixtysomething owner of Katy’s Candy Store located on Tompkins Avenue by Vernon Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, who told the authors: “My store is the last of the penny candy stores in New York. I still sell candy for a penny and I even sell C&C colas for 25 cents. I am known around here as the ‘Dinosaur of Tompkins’ because I’ve been open for so long. I was born and raised in this Bed-Sty neighborhood and I’ve seen a lot of changes.I was here when it was all Jewish and Italian and when it changed to Spanish and black. I’ve been through the dope, crack and everything else this neighborhood has thrown at me. I speak three languages: English, Spanish and Motherfucker. You’ve got to be tough to survive around here.”Predictably, Katy’s Candy Store’s days are numbered since her landlord wants to convert the building into luxury-type apartments and, when her lease expires in 2009, she’ll be forced to close after 40 years in business.Changing economics, coupled with increasing city bureaucracy, are the two main culprits in wiping out New York City’s mom and pops. Examples, said Karla, include the annual $1,500 tax that the city imposes on small stores for simply having a neon sign, as well as forcing some small businesses to conform to a changing neighborhood by redesigning their storefronts.“In the past month or two the city passed, or rather enforced, a health code that says you can’t hang meats in the window anymore without refrigeration,” says James, pointing to a photo of the storefront of E. Kurowycky & Son Meat Products on First Avenue near 7th Street. “And it is putting them out of business because their business is based on smell and sight; their business has declined 20 percent to 30 percent since that law was enforced.”In reference to a shot of the charming C. DiPalo Latteria on Grand and Mott Streets—in business since 1925—James explains that, “The Little Italy guys are getting pushed out because their whole business is built on people coming and double-parking and leaving.”“Italians don’t really live in Little Italy anymore,” Karla adds. “So they double park and run in and get their cheese or whatever. But now the city stands there all day long and tickets people for double parking. And all the parking lots that used to be there have been taken over by condos.”To James and Karla Murray, passionate observers and documenters, both New York’s disappearing storefronts and its disappearing graffiti art have a great deal in common. Their vibrancy reflects the soul of New York and their demise reflects a sad step in a changing city. “Look at that!” says James, putting his finger on a wide shot of a New York block of mom and pop storefronts. “Every one of these has a face to them. It’s like a person almost.” Soon all that will be left of those diverse faces will be what the duo have been able to capture in photographs before the city’s cleansed of its muck, its character—and its history.MUCH LOVE & RESPECT to SERVE FBA,TC5,FC,TNB,TDS