Beginnings
Welcome to Art Crimes, a gallery of graffiti art from cities around the world. This project was started with a handful of photos from Atlanta and Prague by Susan Farrell in May 1994, and the site went public that September. Susan teamed up with photographer Brett Webb in September 1994, who also worked in support of the site in various ways until 2005. Art Crimes has won many awards for excellence, including Cool Site of the Day {1994} and top-10 nominee for Best of the Web {1995}. This site has also been featured in Flashbacks, Twelve Ounce Prophet, Blitzkreig, Scientific American, Newsweek, Wired, Village Voice, Discovery Channel, Radio France, ZDTV`s Internet Tonight, New York Times, USA Today, and many other fine publications. As of July 2004, Art Crimes has thousands of images from 445 cities around the world. Art Crimes was the first graffiti site on the net, and we`re still one of the biggest, although many other interesting and useful sites have since sprung up. Purpose In many places, painting graffiti is illegal. We do not advocate breaking the law, but we think art belongs in public spaces and that more legal walls should be made available for this fascinating art form. Because it is so hard to get books published and to keep photos and blackbooks from being seized and destroyed, the Internet may be the best way to publish and preserve this information. Please get involved in the effort to preserve your local graffiti history, if you can. Our main goals are to provide cultural information and resources and to help preserve and document the constantly disappearing paintings. We also want to spread the truth that this kind of graffiti, called "writing" is being done by artists who call themselves "writers," not by gangs. Get Involved Art Crimes is a collaborative, ongoing, volunteer project. Special thanks to all the people who have supported and encouraged us. If we can read the artist`s signature, it appears in the caption. Most captions are of the form: writer.CREW, which translates roughly as artist.club. Please email us if you find any dead links or wrong captions. You may find some language or images offend you -- but graffiti is risky stuff -- you`re on your own. Click on a small picture to see a larger version. We have great respect for you and your work. If you want to get involved, we welcome you. Protect your history by making it digital. Tell your story, express your opinions and publish them. Make your own site and send us your Web address. Make the Internet work for you. Tell the world about your zine or your art enterprise... hook up. Fight media with media. See what other writers and photographers all over the world are doing. Be careful in forums and chatrooms online, since those are very public places, and words once spoken have a life of their own. Many writers object to the terms "graffiti," "artist," "spraycan art," "graff," and other common terms used to describe the images we show at Art Crimes and those who make them. Although these terms are weak or have undesirable connotations, we think the currently preferred term, "writer," does not adequately set graffiti writers apart from book authors or journalists, which causes some confusion outside the community. Phase 2 prefers "style writing," which is a better but lesser-known term. This site uses "graffiti," because we think this word still has the most recognition and precision and using it makes Art Crimes more findable with search engines. Copyright Notices Photos belong to the photographers and artists. Artists have the ultimate legal rights to their own artwork and images of it. The photographers are protecting their particular photographs, not claiming any ownership over the art itself. The photos are copyrighted to protect the artists. Since the photographers have made the art portable, it is their responsibility to contr
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