Thomas Christ

Overview
Thomas Christ

"The New York graffiti scene is at the beginning of an urban art movement that transcends all conventional categories as a form of artistic expression. With his expressive figures, Richard Hambleton is one of the pioneers of this art form, which directly addresses the emotional state of the urban environment. His actions are at once unique and ephemeral, as well as unsaleable and illegal. I was well aware of the artistic power of his manifestations at the time, so I felt the need to photographically record his works in the early 80s and accompany them with a text." 
Thomas Christ

The Swiss Thomas Christ from Basel was one of the first to document the phenomenon of graffiti and street art with his photos from 1982 and '83. He used New York graffiti artists as well as Keith Haring and Richard Hambleton as models of illegal design in public space.

Thomas Christ, born in Zurich in 1953, has lived in Basel since 1974, where he successfully completed his law school studies with a doctoral thesis on the copyright of filmmakers. Among his most artistically successful series are his works on the theme of "Schaufensterspiegelungen" from the years 1974-1979, published in 1980 by the Galerie von Bartha in Basel, as far as his published collection of New York Subway Graffiti, a documentation from the Bronx that is both artistically and sociologically significant.

"Urban Graffiti" was his second publication, having already released "Subway Graffiti" in 1984. There the focus was on painted New York Trains and Walls, which he had photographed during the same period. Poem allowed a glimpse into his Blackbook, which are shown as a collection at the end of the book.

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