PUBLIC WALL WRITING IN PHILADELPHIA is a book of photographs chronicling the history of wall writing in Philadelphia from the late 1960’s through the early 1980’s. Images of SEPTA stations and platforms, gang corners and roll calls, anti-graffiti propaganda and buff-men, run-down neighborhoods and the citizens that inhabited them serve to paint a bleak yet timeless portrait of Philadelphia.
The phenomenon of wall writing permeates all the photos: Graffiti in the 11th Street Concourse as dense as overgrown weeds; an image of a young man writing "Tom loves Kate" on a granite wall, a reminder that writers are not all "hoodlums" bent on destruction. Many seek to communicate. Public Wall Writing in Philadelphia will be well received by graffiti aficionados, historians, and anyone interested in the history of everyday urban life.