…Or better snap it fast!

A TOUR DE FORCE!

Graffiti has appeared on railroad boxcars and subways for many years with many international styles stemming from New York City subway graffiti. There are many other instances of notable graffiti.  Namely, Bozo Texino…one with a history dating back to the 1920′s and continuing to the present day. In the heyday of hobo graffiti, boxcar observers were treated to a diverse  array of visuals and expression. Beyond  tags and caricatures, you can find propaganda, poetry, political satire, narrative art plus a code of symbols aimed towards fellow freight riders.

“In addition to human faces and forms, students of boxcar calligraphy bump into figures of animals now and then, also pictures of trains and locomotives, but rarely any other type of machine. Most of these masterpieces are drawn by hoboes while they are waiting for freights or loafing around warehouses. Or, perchance, while enjoying free transportation at the company’s expense, they show their gratitude by scribbling over the inside walls of the train. Other sketches are done by railroad men in terminal yards.” Railroad magazine July 1939

It was often the railroad employees that decorated the trains! Sometimes more so than by hoboes or riders. Texas filmmaker Bill Daniel has studied the culture and through many years of research produced the documentary film ‘Who is Bozo Texino?’ Daniel even identifies Bozo Texino as an engineer named J.H. McKinley, who titled himself Texino and added his own cowboy caricature. Daniel lived the vagabond life in his quest for the origins of such a unique and selectively iconic writer. But ultimately he  wanted “to show what the message of graffiti is, that there’s an art in life when it’s free, that outside the boundaries of commodity and wage life there’s a flourishing human condition, with storytelling, social bonds, and friendship.”

 http://www.billdaniel.net/  

freight train art

       Having lost my super cool digital SLR with just as super fantastic Zuiko telephoto lens in San Francisco (now that’s a whole other story!), I arrived in Nashville and at the crossroads of freight train USA without a camera! Quelle Horreur!!!

What was The Graffiti Hunter supposed to do? Mope about, look longingly at others’ photos of graffiti and street art on Flickr? It was indeed a depressing time, but to my rescue came my dear father. He rushed me, from England, a Nikon Coolpix. So OK, it’s fairly simple, nothing fancy…point and shoot but who was I to complain… Now catching a fast-moving train with awesome graffiti bursting forth from the cars is extremely tricky with a non-SLR camera. For every 20 or so photos, I might be lucky if I snagged one fairly well and that’s hopeful! Most are a blur or the tail end of a really fantastic throw up. Sometimes I catch a great shot of the rocky gravel underfoot plus the grinding wheels of the train…But what fun!

Hearing the train in the distance, it’s horn blaring and warning ‘I’m a coming!’

Then…whoosh, whoosh, whoosh

They cruise steadily in to town but, boy do they haul ass out of it! When the coast is clear, I’ll run a long the tracks, two sleepers at a time and head for a bridge or tunnel. This is where a graffiti hunters’ dreams come true…

I swear I am forever a kid who just discovered railroads and is completely and utterly addicted to the graffiti hunt…