Interview de Tarek sur Urbaneez

How did Paris Tonkar come about?

I always wanted to write books. Ever since I was a child, it has always been my ambition and my vocation. When I was very young, I also received a little Kodak camera for my birthday. I was used to taking photos of anything I found weird or strange. In the mid-1980s, when I started tagging with friends, I took photos of what we were doing together, around my house. And when I came across Subway Art, by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant (1984), and Spraycan Art, by Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff (1987), two reference books on New York and the world of graffiti, I said to myself that nothing of the kind existed in France. Graffiti then became a pretext to write my first book. In 1986, the idea started to germinate, and in 1987 I got into it. From that point, the book project became an obsession. I bought myself a new camera. I went all over Paris, the southern suburbs, and Seine-Saint-Denis to take photos of what I saw. On the B line of the RER, in Champigny-sur-Marne and all the vacant lots I came across… wherever there was a photographic interest!

How did you find a publisher?

I contacted many publishing houses without success because most of them wanted to take over the project, but without me, and pass it on to someone else. But the girlfriend of a graffiti artist put me in touch with her father, who was the editor of Marval. He advised me and put me on the path of Florent Massot, a young independent publisher willing to take the risk of publishing such a book like this. After signing my publishing contract, we worked together on the construction of the book for five months, with a pre-selection of photos, then another two months to create the layout, on the rue des Cinq-Diamants in Paris, where we had been lent a room. Some of the photos were taken before 1987. Others concern walls dating from 1984 and 1985, which were still visible! The Graffiti made on the metro was more ephemeral, as they were quickly cleaned up. But in some wastelands, the walls remained untouched for years. I never stopped taking photos, because very early on, I had the idea of making a volume 2 but some of my photos were published in 1Tox magazine. The book Paris Tonkar was published in November 1991 with 2’500 copies and a year later, over 4’000 copies were reprinted.