draft of about-history

i am a recovering artist,doc filmmaker, photographer, social sculpture, dreamer etc - in 1987 i took a series of still photos on a trip to Europe and also when i returned home to NYC i continued shooting contemporary wall writings...which eventually i called at the time ContemporaryHieroglyphics they were from all over Europe and many in english because a lot of the music people were listening to was by english speakers - wall word writing was more common in Europe (Europe was also big on stenciling too) -

i was moved by the power of the words and imagery in the words not so much at the time the vizual look - and i liked that most of the writings were not signed and were just there for you to see - the combination of the words and power of words on walls and that people would go to that much effort and it was more or less selfless act since they didn't sign it - i was not interested in tagging at the time - i was interested in contemporary cave writing, Hieroglyphics on walls

also at the time there was only one book i found on American graffiti which was published by Thames publishing out of London... so on a trip with my then British girlfriend we went to London and took him my idea for ContemporaryHieroglyphics and my images to meet with the publisher - to which he responded we already have one book on graffiti that nobody is interested in why would we want to have another - and so fast forward 1998 or so i am walking through the back alleys in long island city queens with my then Brazilian girlfriend and as all good artist, we can't help but look at found material that we stumble on as food for our imaginations and material to play with - and in one of my many walks this time on a damp not enough guts to rain night i found sticking out of the garbage a thick photo album with out a cover on it that caught my attention and it turned out to be an album of train writings graffiti and i thought - now i can't just walk by this and leave it for the rain and the garbage man

so fast forward to November of 2006 i am helping a friend James Kusel photograph his graffiti works that he has done starting in 1979 online and in the course of building JamesKusel.com i show him my found graffiti photo album and he shows me an album he photographed over the years too and i think to myself what a wonderful life it could be and it came to me that i have been here in this graffiti world before and i remembered about the book pitch for ContemporaryHeiroglyphics and so i first register the name ContemporaryHieroglyphics.com domain name thinking i don't need a gate keeper publisher i can now publish my photos i shot in the mid-late 1980's from the found album online - so after buy a professional scanner i started scanning in the photos from the found album first since it was deteriorating since i had it - the colors were fading too - so i built the website and thought to myself well maybe the train writing graffiti is not really the type of hieroglyphics that i was originally thinking of the album was more graphics and i was interested in words and wall poetry in my first photo series - and i thought maybe ContemporaryCaveDrawings were more reflective of the more colorful graffiti art - and so in beginning of Dec 2006 i registered the domain name ContemporaryCaveDrawings.com and since some might say that i am a filmmaker and that my primary focus these days is documentary filmmaking and a revival of photography -

editors note: oh yes soon around end of 1987 i took 35 rolls of my photo series i shot all over Europe to my professional nyc developing house and when i came back to get them - they couldn't find them -= they lost all the films and since that day i was in shock and have never taken a still photo that needed developing - end note

so fast forward to today 12/16/06 3:30am i am writing this with half a mind and one eye open and my plans are to take what i have already done and put them online and along comes the Wooster On Spring graffiti and street artist event 12/15/06 and now i think i should put it into a documentary with a lot of it to be an online documentary including i took over three hundred photos of the Wooster On Spring opening night even some the ones that have made the cut Wooster On Spring opening 12/15/06

enjoy

geo

geo (at) contemporarycavedrawings.com