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You Weren't There: ’90s Graffiti in New York

Edited by Hugo Martinez


Tagged @ NYABF 2026

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New York graffiti's golden age is immortalized in this 400-page compendium of photographs and artist interviews
Though the medium was born in the '60s, graffiti art reached a fever pitch in 1990s New York. After the widespread subway cleanup that ended the so-called "train era," artists adapted, using the streets and urban architecture to combat alienation. Blending aesthetics with lifestyle, they reconnected art with the pulse of human existence. Edited by Hugo Martinez, owner of New York's Martinez Gallery, You Weren't There is a snapshot of the art and artists of a pivotal city in a pivotal decade for graffiti art. Focusing on the 1990s—a decade of unpredictability and innovation—this book traces graffiti's evolution and its sensibilities within broader social currents. It includes contemporaneous photographs of the works in situ by Danielle Becker, James McDonald, Olalla Novoa, H. Martinez, Phil Mansfield and Stephen J. Bell, alongside interviews conducted by Martinez with 25 artists such as Case2, Ghost, Nato, Rebel, Setup and Web 113.

Hugo Martinez, (born 1951, Manhattan) a New York-based gallerist, curator and theorist, is a pioneer who has been forcefully challenging the art establishment by legitimizing graffiti as contemporary art since the early 1970s.

He founded United Graffiti Artists (uga) in 1972, the first graffiti writers’ collective to assert its legitimacy against institutional gatekeeping. Through uga he staged landmark exhibitions that confronted the art world’s exclusion of urban vernacular practices. His interdisciplinary work further defied boundaries between high art and street culture. As a writer and lecturer Martinez produced seminal theoretical texts that critiqued the marginalization of graffiti and reframed it as a vital artistic movement. His lifelong effort has been to dismantle hierarchical distinctions in art, preserving New York graffiti’s history while securing its place in global contemporary discourse.




HATJE CANTZ | Hardback| 8.25 x 11.75 | 496 pgs | 250 color