“Keith Baugh Documenting NYC’s Early ’70s Subway Masterpiece Era”

Before the art galleries and auction houses caught on, before subway art had a name in the fine art world, Keith Baugh stepped off a plane from England in the summer of ’73 and straight into the culture of New York’s subway system.

In this post, the British painter and photographer reflects on the moment he first laid eyes on spray-painted steel, names like Kindo, Jester, and Ruby Cool rolling by like moving murals. The images he captured are a time capsule and Baugh had the eye and the lens to preserve it. We did this interview back in April, and we dig Keith for being patient..

When you first stepped onto an NYC subway back in the 70’s covered top to bottom in marker tags and spray paint, what was going through your mind?

In the summer of 1973, I arrived in New York on vacation from England. Waiting for the Manhattan bound subway train I was surprised to witness colorful spray-painted imagery on the exterior panels of every carriage. The interior of the car I was in was covered with broad magic-marker tags creating a tapestry of overlapping signatures.

I hung onto the strap as we headed up to 77th Street station on Lexington Avenue and made out the names Kindo, Jester and Ruby Cool. This was New York graffiti, and it offered a potent and attention-grabbing welcome to the metropolis. Over the next couple of days, I became intrigued by the painted trains and when an American friend told me that I could photograph them in daylight from the elevated tracks I travelled up to Harlem and the Bronx with my Nikon camera and rolls of film and took a few dozen shots.

Two years later in 1975 I returned to New York and again travelled up to the elevated platforms to photograph train writing that no longer had that raw innocence but was now a developing art-form that offered confident 3-D letterforms decorated with arrows, crowns and graphic symbols occasionally with comic book characters surrounded by painted clouds.

To me this wasn’t random vandalism but rather evidence of an organized creative movement. I was an Englishman in New York, and I felt that I had been in the right place at the right time to capture what to me was a significant cultural and creative experience. Returning to London I showed the photographs to a few friends then filed them away and forgot about them for thirty years.

You documented some of the most legendary names in subway writing ……who stood out most then and now?

In 1973 and 1975 I had no idea who had painted the trains in New York, how they had managed to paint the trains or why they had painted the trains. When I stood on the elevated platforms between 125th and 161st Street stations I just took shots of the pieces that had a certain creative impact.

Back then photographers used 35mm film and due to the number of shots available, the expense of film and the long delay in getting the film processed you had to be very selective. If digital cameras had been available back, then I am sure that I would have taken many hundreds of shots.

In an essay in the 2nd edition of my book ‘Early New York Subway Graffiti 1973-1975’ graffiti historian Jay Edlin wrote ‘It’s flattering when someone outside the culture recognizes the beauty of an art form that nobody, including most of the artists, really consider one.

Keith captured timeless classics from the earliest works by COMET and the unheralded subway killer PRIEST-167 to a rare COST piece with a Don Martin face for the ‘C’. And though these works seem primitive by today’s standards, they are the forgotten bridges linking then to now. It amazes me to think that Keith Baugh shot these photos based only on instinct, oblivious to any writer hierarchy’

Looking back at the 250 or so photographs I took back in the 1970s my Favorite shots include the following … STIM top-to-bottom, VAMM painted on the side of a submarine painted on a subway car.

Masterpieces by CLIFF-159, CRACHEE Star & Stripes piece, TRACY-168 acid colour WILD-STYLE masterpiece, pieces by style-master RIFF / CRUNCH / CASH / WORM and classic masterpieces by BLADE including a fabulous red and white piece with blue spots and the iconic ‘EYE’ blockbuster with John-150.

You come from a background in painting and photography, and we heard you’ve taken photos of legends like Bob Marley, Johnny Nash, and others. Can you tell us more about that?

In the early 1960s I studied Fine Art / Painting at Kingston-on-Thames School of Art and Liverpool College of Art. In the 1960s, British art schools became crucibles for artistic innovation and a launching pad for many artists and musicians. Art Schools embraced experimentation and a move away from traditional academic art, fostering a spirit of innovation and pushing boundaries. 

During the early years of developing my creative work I supported myself teaching art. I have had numerous solo exhibitions of paintings, ceramics and photographs. My New York subway photos have recently been exhibited at The Museum of Graffiti in Miami, the New York Graffiti exhibition at Howl Gallery in Manhattan and at the Urban Art show at Centre Pompidou in Malaga, Spain.

In March 1972 I met a couple of musicians in a Soho, London nightclub and having found out that they had been recording at CBS studios, I invited them to come and perform to the students at my school.

Surprisingly they kindly agreed and four days later, Bob Marley then relatively unknown and American singer Johnny Nash performed a stripped back acoustic show for the lucky students. This story along with my photographs from that legendary performance resulted in three BBC documentaries on Bob Marley and numerous music magazine and national press articles.

Mojo Music Magazine featured a large spread with my photos with a sub-title referring to Bob Marley… ‘For a brief hour and a half, a humble school gym in South London played host to the soon-to-be coolest man on the planet’. Of course, I was, for a while a very popular art teacher.

On May 1st, 1965, I saw Bob Dylan perform in Liverpool during the ‘Don’t Look Back’ UK tour. I got to meet Bob the following morning at the Adelphi Hotel, and I knew that I was in the presence of pure genius. Over the next 40 years I got to photograph Dylan at numerous concerts and my photos have been shown globally through GETTY images. In 2019 Bob Dylan selected one of my photos for the deluxe boxset ‘Trouble No More’.

Tizer mentioned you sat in on one of his classes where he was breaking down Philly and NYC writing from the’60s, that’s when you mentioned the photos?

In 2003, I was Head of Art at a Visual Arts School near Bristol, hometown of Banksy. We had a program of inviting practicing artists to undertake a weeklong residency to work with and alongside our art students.

American-born Tizer was the first graffiti artist in the art department, and he quickly became a folk hero, spray-painting large pieces around the school. For me, meeting Tizer was a momentous occasion in more ways than one.

A few years later, Tizer wrote about our meeting in an exhibition catalogue:

“I first met Keith Baugh at a visual arts school near Bristol in 2003. Keith was the Head of Art, and I was amazed at the standard of work being produced by the students. He sat in on my first lesson and after explaining who I was and how I first started getting into writing as a 12-year-old, I started talking about the origins of New York / Philadelphia graffiti.

Keith later joined in, telling his students about New York’s painted subway trains … at the end of the lesson I asked him how come he knew so much about the subject. He told me that he had been in New York in the early 1970s and had taken photographs of the painted trains.

I then asked him immediately if he still had those images and if I could see them. The next day he brought them all in and I literally ‘bugged out’. I had no idea that he had so many photographs of such quality … I was expecting to see just two or three crappy pics. I had no idea that he was a professional photographer taking perfect images of early masters of spray-can art.

The photos available of this period in New York’s train history are very rare. Now I am sitting with this guy in an art room in the middle of the English countryside looking at slide film photos of whole cars, window-downs and tags developing into 3-D pieces.

He had ‘images’ and I don’t say that lightly. He had stuff from before Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant. At this point I told him he had to get the photos published in a book, as his photographs are so important for social and urban history and for American art history … and I am so glad that he did!”

Can you explain the different editions of the book? Have you noticed certain editions being more sought after by collectors and historians?

After contacting a number of London publishers to gauge interest in a book of my photographs of early to mid 1970s New York subway graffiti I came away feeling frustrated at the lack of real interest. The main negative response was that the book would only appeal to a minority audience of writer aficionados.

Finally in 2009 I decided to go ahead and self-publish a hard-back book titled ‘Early New York Subway Graffiti 1973-1975’ to be sold solely through my website. I had total control of the design and layout, and my son produced a YouTube promo video which soon attracted 70,000 views. So much for the publisher’s negative comments about minority subject matter and a limited audience.

To my surprise, within four weeks of publication I received a letter from the legendary pioneer writer BLADE inviting me to meet up with him along with at a joint graffiti photo exhibition in Paris, France. I was told to bring along as many copies of my book that I could carry.

I will always have the fond memory of Blade going through my book with a running commentary about each piece with Martha and Henry looking on with smiles and comments along the line of ‘My goodness, Lava is going to be so excited to see that photograph!’ My large bag of books sold out in minutes to the French enthusiasts in the gallery.

In 2014 I was again invited to meet up with BLADE and his beautiful wife Portia (RIP) in Rome for the European launch of the book BLADE – KING OF GRAFFITI. This fabulous book includes a number of my 1970s photographs.

The first edition hardback was a great success, and I was invited to produce a second edition by Tangent Books, a much-loved Bristol based publisher of a number of books on Street Art and local boy wonder Banksy. This book was an extended publication with more photographs plus essays by New York based writer historians Chris Pape and Jay Edlin.

Also featured were photos and commentary from New York writer royalty including Jon Naar, Lee Quinones, Alan Fleisher (Ale-One) Jonathan ‘Meres’ Cohen, Hen Dogg and Wonder Mike (Sugarhill Gang), Duster UA, Mike (VAMM), Blade, Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant. The second edition sold out completely in record time and now is highly sought after.

The third edition ‘New York Subway Art 1973-1975’ … and probably my final book … was published in 2019. The cover features the iconic Blade ‘EYE’ masterpiece and It has full page hi-res photographs with an extra 24 unseen shots. The back cover features a classic SUPER STRUT top-to bottom masterpiece and a quote from Chris Pape … ‘For those of you who weren’t around in 1975, this is it.

As close a document as you will ever find to the roots of the subway writer movement’ This edition has now sold out and used copies are now fetching crazy prices on Amazon etc.

You’ve blended painting and photography throughout your career, how have those two mediums influenced each other in your work?

In 2016 I was invited by Westbank Gallery in Notting Hill, London to exhibit a series of my New York subway photographs alongside a number of large paintings on canvas that combined my love for classic American cars, billboards, old-neon signs, 1970s cop cars alongside graffiti trains. This solo show was a big success and looking back was one of my most rewarding exhibitions.

In 2023 my painting ‘Mono at Coney Island’ was selected for the highly prestigious Summer Exhibition at The Royal Academy of Arts in London. This was probably the first painting of a New York graffiti train to hang on those hallowed walls.

Did you ever cross paths with UK legends like King Robbo?? What’s your take on the UK writers versus the early NYC pioneers?

I met up with King Robbo in London and gave him a signed copy of my book. He thanked me profusely and said ‘Thanks Keef, now I don’t need to steal one’. He looked through the photos and was very knowledgeable about the early New York pioneers saying that they had been the biggest influence on his getting involved in writing.

Have you ever tagged? Is there a ‘Keith B’ throw-up somewhere?

Check out the KEEF BOFF photo … that’s how you pronounce my name!

SKI 168 Interview

Where are you based these days, if someone wanted to bring you out for an exhibition or speaking event, what would be the best way to make that happen?

After living in Notting Hill, London for many years I moved with my wife and two sons to a beautiful and funky riverside village in the West Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, home to the Beckhams, Royalty and many celebs, artists, musicians etc. I’m now an old geezer but with the heart of a teenager … and I’m still painting and exhibiting.

Next show is Paintings of Venice May/Jun. We still holiday in the South of France but long-haul flights are probably a thing of the past.

CONTACT INFORMATION:
Instagram | Website | Youtube
Stay connected to MRCNNlive.com Subscribe our newsletter.
INTERVIEW: LaMont Reed
EDITOR: LaMont Reed
IMAGE: Keith Baugh