Henry Chalfant

Henry Chalfant is a New York–based sculptor, photographer and filmmaker best known for his role in producing the PBS documentary Style Wars in 1983, followed by the book Subway Art, which he co-authored with Martha Cooper in 1984. Both are revered documents of graffiti culture, given the ephemeral nature of the medium. Chalfant entrenched himself in New York’s youth culture throughout the 1970s and ’80s by photographing subway graffiti, breakdancing and the birth of rap music. Chalfant’s graffiti archives are a work of visual anthropology, universally appreciated as seminal documents of late-20th-century American popular culture.