Click Here To Purchase From Amazon Bathroom Graffiti

Author: Mark Ferem

Publisher: Mark Batty Publisher

ISBN: 9780977282746

Mark Ferem is a native Californian and has spent most of his life living and working in Los Angeles. From 1992 to 1995, Ferem has worked as an art director where he won a National Addy Award. Ferem has always had an interest in ritual and human nature. He has freelanced in order to fund his graffiti restroom project. His photojournalism has been featured in Beautiful Decay, Adbusters, Vapours and more besides.

Graffiti is not just street art that can be found in cities and towns, it is also urban artwork that can be discovered in public toilets, women, men or unisex it really doesn’t matter. Graffiti will always make its mark on the stall walls or anywhere else in the public lavatories. Some are very bold and brash indeed, other scribbles are very thought-provoking and even some funny. All these whatever you may think are a part of society in today’s world.

Mark Ferem, always having an interest in graffiti, has managed to document it very well in his book. Colourful pictures, others plain and simple, are depicted in this great graffiti book.  Ferem has managed to capture the religious messages hidden in the graffiti.

The author has sectioned the images found on walls in public restrooms into separate chapters eg  “Men’s Room” “Women’s Room” and Uni-Sex .

In the men’s restrooms we see many different messages, although men tend to be more interested in their perception of life.

I rather liked a comment made by “Buckaroo Bonzi” in which he writes “No matter where you go…there you are” very thought-provoking indeed but also so true. These graffiti writers no matter how you label them could have been born to be poets or philosophers in my opinion.

Another good example of poetry devised by these artists/writers is a comment drawn on a wall of Bates Motel in Austin. “I took a shit….flushed it out to sea - if you love something…set it free” crude perhaps but nevertheless very clever I thought. This person/persons strike me as easy going and kind, such a good way of putting something that although very vulgar has been made into something that is quite sweet.

There are cartoon animations also that Ferem has captured, some drawn on tiles others on the walls. These too have political messages in them, although there are others which lean more to young naked women and the sexual side of things. I can’t relate to these but I suppose they must have some meaning to men?

Some scribbles in this book are simply too hard to interpret but that is not to say these can’t be appreciated. Ferem has certainly got an eye for this kind of doodle and has managed to capture the essence of it very well.

It is known that men have dominated the restroom graffiti scene but now it seems that women have also followed the craze. In women’s graffiti, they tend to express bad experiences in words. One sentence a women wrote instantly grabbed my attention. “Sometimes it feels good to feel so horrible”. I could completely understand this person and where they were coming from. Having been to that deep dark place myself where it really does feel good to feel horrid, this is one sentence that really meant something to me.

Another scribble drawn on the wall of a toilet in The Ponderosa in Tijeras, made me laugh but this was full of meaning “For a good time go out with yourself”. Perhaps other women may take heed at this statement and give it a go.

There are lots more of these statements in the women’s restrooms, some religious others a little too rude for my liking. All this said, it still requires a very fine insight like Ferem to capture the real essence of this side in the graffiti scene.

Next we move on to Uni-Sex. The author examines the exclamation drawn on a wall in Sofie’s Bar New York “King Kong died for your Sins”. This is a message that really does shout out at us about our carbon foot prints and for me, its message that also says man is too inconsiderate and selfish. A very good message and like the author says himself, “will humanity be awakened in time to accept responsibility?” we can only hope.

“Imagination is total freedom” this is a piece of graffiti on page 81 that I again feel I can relate to so well. I think deep down we all love to use our imagination in different situations. For me it is creating stories and novels, for this person perhaps something else? An excellent statement indeed.

I can’t help but find so many of these thought-provoking quotes.  One I loved in particular and one that is so true to reality is “If women are so independent, why do they go to the ladies room in pairs?” fantastic. A man may well think this (or is it written by a woman?) and I think if we women are honest with ourselves, we can see the point of view this graffiti writer is coming from.

There is more graffiti work in this collection which is so well documented  Towards the end of this wonderful book we have the chapter “Politikal Asylum” which basically explores many angles of the political side of things.

A graffiti stencil I thought was absolute genius and made something that is very much a big part of Europe’s growing problem, was found on page 100 and 101. It’s no big surprise now that the population of people in Europe and America are getting much fatter. It’s not unusual to see a large man or woman waddling down the street, so when I saw that someone had cleverly used the Burger King logo and transformed it into Burger Kill, it really got my attention. How marvellous is this? It might be too close to home for some people, but it does get the message across that perhaps fast-food chains are not all  they first appear to be . Again a very political statement.

People who read graffiti often set up a chain reaction by responding and leaving their own version to add to what is already written.

I loved this book because it makes something that not a lot of people appreciate into something that may open people’s eyes next time they use the public rest rooms.

With each chapter also comes a small resume mostly written by Ferem himself.

Call graffiti vandalism if you like, but I think Mark Ferem has done a brilliant job at highlighting what a wonderful thing toilet graffiti can be. Thought-provoking, realistic, very urban and very much a part of the twenty-first century scene.

This is one book that is sure to maybe even inspire you to follow in the footsteps of graffiti writers. Again an absolute marvellous book.

Click Here To Purchase From Amazon Bathroom Graffiti