The Bay Area is surrounded by graffiti and its colorful styles. Unfortunately, people have a problem admiring the work because of its connection to gang violence.
If you are like me, we assume that almost every tag represents a name, color, or a gang’s territory.

Graffiti goes back as far as the 1920s but it wasn’t until the 60s that graffiti became fairly known and connected to gang violence. New York was the hub for graffiti artists and has spread itself through out the world.

Photographer and author of Bay Area Graffiti and San Francisco Street Art, Steve Rotman, became obsessed with graffiti while putting the books together. During his obsession, Rotman noticed the misconception surrounding graffiti and didn’t understand why.

“I’ve come to understand the Bay Area graffiti world extremely well and authorities continue to push this idea that there’s this big gang involvement,” Rotman says. “I just haven’t seen it and I just don’t think it exist…”

Writers and gang members are completely separate from each other. Rotman says that the thought that there’s a connection between the two is something comical for graffiti writers, yet frustrating.

25-year-old graffiti writer Devote says, “Just the fact that it’s illegal is not going to stop people from doing it. If you have some kind of vision or if you are just getting up to do it, you’re still gonna do it, because it’s something important and the laws don’t really mean anything.”According to 18-year-old Slide, who has been painting graffiti since middle school, gang members are not fans of them, “I’ve been in spots where it’s like the shady part of the area and they’re like (gang members) 'you are making this spot hot by spray painting on these walls.' They don’t even like graffiti writers.”

In San Francisco, if a graffiti writer gets caught and damages exceed more than $400 dollars, it can be punishable as a felony and graffiti writer can serve up to three years in prison. “We didn’t kill anyone,” Slide says. “We’re just painting.” But the fact that it’s illegal is tempting to 18-year-old graffiti writer KV. “It’s a form of illegal art and that was very exciting for me,” he says.

Aside from its negative assumptions, tagging is not simple. Trying to find a style that best describes you—the artist—can be tough. But coming up with a name that not only defines you as an artist but has meaning was something that Devote struggled with. “I was writing a similar name but it didn’t have as much meaning and as I got more into graffiti, I wanted to choose a name that was the quality I like… so I write Devote because it comes from devotion or being devoted so it’s the kind of quality I like to remind myself of.”

For Slide, tagging started by writing other classmates’ names in middle school. It wasn’t until her brother questioning her tags that she started finding her style. “My brother was like, 'why don’t you just write your own name?' and of course I couldn’t write my own name, so I was just trying to figure out… what letters have the specific bars I like to paint, what twist and turns can I do with them.”

Slide’s naming process shows that graffiti is not just spray painting something on the wall and calling it art. It also has no connection to gangs. It is about originality. The colors, the details they choose and the fonts young artists put into their tag helps them build a signature style.
 

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