New York City Graffiti - The Destiny Children

New York City Graffiti - The Destiny Children published by Schiffer books

Received this book just before Christams from the good folks at Bushwood books but due to the festivities its taken a while to get round to reviewing this.

So, given that you are most likely a writer and reading this review, what do you know about The Destiny Children? An internet search wont through up much other than info about this book.

So what do you need to know. Well its all in this book and what a book. 344 pages of high quality old school graffiti funk including 480+ photos. Need to know more? TDC hit the NY subway system and they hit it hard.

This book celebrates 25 years of The Destiny Children. The book transports you back to when graffiti was beginning to explode across the globe and was under serious attack from the MTA. The book features the crews work on trains and their transition to walls and tractor trailers.

To give you a feel of what this book looks like it has a feel of what maybe Subway Art would have been had it focussed on one crew. Like Subway Art the book has fold out pages to show full car pieces but there are far more included in here and it gives you a chance to fully appreciate the individual styles of the crew members. The styles are classic and timeless and burn so much stuff that is out there now.

Given that the TDC were active during the time when NY where cracking down on graffiti on the subway system, the fact that they were able to produce so much quality work is really impressive.

As the book focuses on one crew it means it can give an indepth account of what made the crew and each member tick. There are hundreds upon hundreds of quality flicks in this book including many action shots of the crew in the train yards putting their work up. But what really makes this book for me is the various tales told about train painting missions including Goldie’s trip to NY, numerous fight and beef tales and general chat about what the graff scene was like back then. There is also some contributions from other writers about how the TDC inspired/impacted on them.

Personally, this book is a favourite amongst the piles of graff books out there. The styles are classic, the colours are of a certain time reminding me of why I got into graff in the first place.

The book is available in the UK from Bushwood Books and is priced at £39.95, although it can be picked up for £29.37 on Amazon. Pricey for a book? Maybe. Worth it? For a book dripping with style then yeah, its worth every penny.

highly recommended!!!!!