{"id":2639,"date":"2009-12-06T15:13:17","date_gmt":"2009-12-06T14:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/champagne.constantvzw.org\/?p=2639"},"modified":"2009-12-07T18:54:49","modified_gmt":"2009-12-07T17:54:49","slug":"cholo-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/champagne.constantvzw.org\/cholo-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Cholo Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"

This isn’t a book just for graffiti and typography nerds, the photos and texts can capture any reader and have a contagious exciting energy to them.
\n\"cholo_cover\"<\/a>
\nFran\u00c3\u00a7ois Chastanet<\/a>, author of “Pixa\u00c3\u00a7\u00c3\u00a3o: S\u00c3\u00a3o Paulo Signature”, has freshly published a new book on graffiti typo research under the title “Cholo Writing: Latino gang graffiti in L.A”.
\nDuring our Paris trip, we met up with him in a bar and he had just got the copies from the printer.
\nIt’s a super cool book, the first part features black and white photos by Howard Gribble, who as a young artist in the 70’s, got interested in the cholo<\/a> writing and decided to document it.
\n\"cholo_innersleeve\"<\/a>
\n\"cholo_writing\"<\/a>
\nThe second part, are colour photos taken by Fran\u00c3\u00a7ois Chastanet during his L.A trip. There is also an essay where he analyses the Cholo writing, tracing the origins of the style all the way back to the Textura<\/a> and Fraktur<\/a> typeface omnipresent in Mexico.
\n\"cholo_type\"<\/a>
\nChastanet told us a few stories from his trip, how dangerous the guys are in theses gangs, how they go out at night marking their quarter with gang names + members in the Cholo writing. There is nothing intellectual (actually the guys are pretty brain dead) or aesthetic in this practice, it’s just purely a traditional gang thing, a bit like cats mark their territory with piss, only these guys aren’t fluffy and cute but carry arms.
\nTo document the writing, he had to get up early and collect as many pictures as possible before noon, when the L.A city cleaning service would go round erasing all the graffiti. After 1pm, the cholos would be up and back on the streets, meaning that photo shooting wasn’t safe anymore. Chastanet told us that the only bloke he met on the street and was able to have a chat to was a dude in a wheel chair, he’d got himself shot and lost the use of his legs, he was therefore considered harmless and “allowed” to cross the different neighborhoods without getting hassled.
\nHopefully, Chastanet will be making it to Brussels for a conference some time in 2010, in the mean time, his book is available here.<\/a>
\nAlso find here<\/a> an interview of Fran\u00c3\u00a7ois Chastanet on his book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This isn’t a book just for graffiti and typography nerds, the photos and texts can capture any reader and have a contagious exciting energy to them. Fran\u00c3\u00a7ois Chastanet, author of “Pixa\u00c3\u00a7\u00c3\u00a3o: S\u00c3\u00a3o Paulo Signature”, has freshly published a new book on graffiti typo research under the title “Cholo Writing: Latino gang graffiti in L.A”. During […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/champagne.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/champagne.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/champagne.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/champagne.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/champagne.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2639"}],"version-history":[{"count":51,"href":"https:\/\/champagne.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2724,"href":"https:\/\/champagne.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639\/revisions\/2724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/champagne.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/champagne.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/champagne.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}