Along a stretch of elevated train tracks on Westchester Avenue in the Bronx, Henry Chalfant encountered the Ghost of Christmas Past in 1977. It was faded, yet stunning — though it wasn’t quite a Dickensian tableau rendered by strokes of a quill.
This apparition covered the entire side of a train, done at night by graffiti artists using swiped cans of Krylon spray paint.
“It was the ‘Merry Christmas train’ by Lee, Mono and Doc of the Fab 5,” Mr. Chalfant recalled. “It was parked in the center track layup. I climbed down onto the catwalk to shoot it with my little 50-millimeter lens.”
From moments like that, Mr. Chalfant went on to amass an archive of New York City subway graffiti that is rivaled only by that of Martha Cooper, a noted shooter in her own right and his collaborator on the seminal volume “Subway Art.” During those heady days in the 1970s, as the city went broke and crazy, armies of young people swept through tunnels and yards, leaving behind rolling — albeit illegal — murals on steel canvases.
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Art & Design Magazine
