Cholo Writing: Latino Gang Graffiti in Los Angeles

29,90€

About

After being out of print and in high demand for years, Cholo Writing is finally available in a beautiful hardcover edition.

Cholo Writing is the 20th century’s oldest form of graffiti, a Mexican-American phenomenon evident in Los Angeles long before the appearance of tags and pieces in the late 1960s New York. It has had a major influence on the visual expressions of Californian popular culture, including the lowrider, surf, skate and hip-hop movements. «Placas» are territorial inscriptions created to define a gang’s turf, a genuine, constantly evolving urban calligraphy with strict codes used by Latino gangs for street writing since the late 1930s.

In this book, the aesthetic evolution of Cholo Writing is documented and the influence of blackletter typefaces and calligraphic models such as Old English is traced through two collections of photographs. One by Californian Howard Gribble, who photographed Chicano gang graffiti over a wide geographic area in the early 1970s, and one by French graphic designer and writer François Chastanet, who traveled to the same Los Angeles neighborhoods in 2008 to document early 21st century inscriptions.

The main essay of this second edition has been updated according to the latest historical research on lettering sources. With foreword by Dr. Chaz Bojórquez, East Los Angeles graffiti pioneer and Godfather of West Coast Cholo Writing for over 50 years.

Author: François Chastanet, Howard Gribble and Chaz Bojorquez

Published by Dokument Press in April 2024

140 pages

16 x 24 cm

Texts in English

Product details

Title

Cholo Writing: Latino Gang Graffiti in Los Angeles

Language

English

ISBN-10

9789188369857

Size

6,30 x 9,45 inch
16 x 24 cm

Cholo Writing: Latino Gang Graffiti in Los Angeles

About

Product details

You may also like

The following 12 pages may interest you as well: