Vice magazine's Pat O'Malley interviews Detroit artist and photographer Scott Hocking, whose new book, "Bad Graffiti," consisting of images from across the city, recently (well, December) came out on Black Dog Publishing of London.
According to O'Malley, "Bad Graffiti" is a collection that "paints a picture of the true essence of graffiti—not some master craftsman creating a massive mural, but a dude with a spray can who just wants his voice to be heard by writing his thoughts on a wall. Even if that message is "I Like Boobs."
O'Malley discovered Hocking's "bad graffiti" while scrolling through his website. He writes:
"I found it odd to find that amidst the conceptual sculptures and photographs, there was a collection of images of a different kind of art—the kind with a lot more dicks and boobs and swears. Scott's series, "Bad Graffiti" documents just that, though "bad" is a subjective term. He knows and has traversed every corner of the city of Detroit, usually with a camera, and has snapped hundreds of shots of funny, odd, and crude spray paint scrawlings he found."
Q) Over the course of the project, did you ever want to include cities other than Detroit?
"I definitely still take photos of things I like in other cities. But I decided I had to have some parameter, otherwise it just gets too damn big. Even just deciding to stay in the city proper boundaries I still had the next level of questions. The majority of the photos are outdoors. I wanted to keep it like that, not too many indoors. What if I decide to take photos of bathroom graffiti? Holy crap, that’s a whole other level, so I stayed away from that."
Click here for more on "Bad Graffiti."
