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About the film. The term 'Benching' was coined in New York in the 1970's by graffiti writers. The bench is a place graffiti writers gather to watch trains. In the subway era writers would go to places such as 149th St. in the Bronx and bench.
POST (center, holding spray can) and friends at Writers’ Bench, 149th Street and Grand Concourse, New York, 1980. Photo: Henry Chalfant
Documentation of New York City subway graffiti history. Featuring graffiti artist biographies, interviews and artwork.
Benching: The Art of Watching Trains is a documentary by M. Nielsen that explores this tradition. The subways in New York were declared graffiti free in 1989 but the story does not end there. The film picks up in the early 1990's when a new generation started benching graffiti on freight trains.
Initially, New York City graffiti was used primarily by political activists to make statements and by street gangs to mark territory. Though graffiti movements such as the Cholos of Los Angeles in the 1930s and the hobo signatures on freight trains predate the New York School, it wasn't till the late 1960s that graffiti’s current identity ...
14 gru 2012 · Mr. Chalfant didn’t meet any actual graffiti writers until 1979, when someone told him about the Writer’s Bench, inside the lower level of the 149th Street and Grand Concourse station. Though...
Graffiti began appearing around New York City with the words "Bird Lives" [1] but after that, it took about a decade and a half for graffiti to become noticeable in NYC. So, around 1970 or 1971, TAKI 183 and Tracy 168 started to gain notoriety for their frequent vandalism. [2] Using a naming convention in which they would add their street number to their nickname, they "bombed" a train with ...
