Expositie

Art is Not a Crime – Henry Chalfant

STRAAT Museum presents the first major Dutch retrospective around Henry Chalfant, photographer and documentary-maker of the New York graffiti scene.

Black-and-white photograph of a boy in the street wearing an 'ART IS NOT A CRIME' T-shirt while two hands cover his face.

STRAAT Museum presents Art is Not a Crime. Henry Chalfant: Capturing graffiti culture, NYC, 1977–1987. The exhibition centres on photographer and documentary-maker Henry Chalfant (US, 1940), whose archive remains crucial for how graffiti culture is seen and preserved.

At the heart of the exhibition are monumental photographs of painted New York subway trains, sometimes over three metres high. Chalfant photographed them with careful attention to scale, quality and exposure time, so that the images are not only documentation but also a physical experience of the street culture of that era.

The exhibition also shows how this archive landed in Amsterdam. In 1984, Chalfant exhibited at the Yaki Kornblit gallery on Willemsparkweg, where his work influenced a young generation and helped lay the foundations for the Dutch graffiti scene. The exhibition can be visited with a regular museum ticket.