Last March I started a 4 part series of interviews
with Cheech Marin,
from MOCA’s website/exhibition:
‘Art in the Streets’ by Jeffrey Deitch...
with Cheech Marin,
from MOCA’s website/exhibition:
‘Art in the Streets’ by Jeffrey Deitch...
Let’s continue with Cheech’s exploration of the roots of East L.A. graffiti and his conversation with the photographer…
Born in Fratina di Porcari, in Lucca, Italy. Gusmano Cesaretti studied at Collegio Cavanis. His father gave him a beautiful photo camera for his 14th birthday. It became his instrument.
Gusmano has expressed himself through a wide range of mediums from photo journalism, editorial, fashion and commercial work to feature films, documentaries and conceptual art. All bear his own special personal vision and style.
“I’m interested in people, and I want to capture society in my photographs in a way that looks beyond the obvious”
–– Gusmano Cesaretti
Gusmano has expressed himself through a wide range of mediums from photo journalism, editorial, fashion and commercial work to feature films, documentaries and conceptual art. All bear his own special personal vision and style.
“I’m interested in people, and I want to capture society in my photographs in a way that looks beyond the obvious”
–– Gusmano Cesaretti
CHEECH MARIN: "Although the origins of American graffiti are typically traced back to New York and Philadelphia in the late 1960s and 1970s, an earlier history began in the barrios of Los Angeles decades before.
Here a subculture developed among Mexican-American youths who were both detached from the culture of their parents and, because of widespread discrimination, prevented from identifying as entirely American. ‘The Pachucos’, as they called themselves, dressed in extravagant, dandyish zoot suits, and they didn’t stray far from the small neighborhoods where they lived.
Gangs emerged as a means of asserting cultural pride and maintaining control over their communities, and street writing was a way of defining territory. Gang life further evolved after the Los Angeles riots of 1943, known as the Zoot Suit Riots, in which racial tension erupted into a series of brutal confrontations between white military servicemen and the young Pachucos.
In the postwar period, Pachuco culture developed into the Cholo gangs of the 1960s.”
Here a subculture developed among Mexican-American youths who were both detached from the culture of their parents and, because of widespread discrimination, prevented from identifying as entirely American. ‘The Pachucos’, as they called themselves, dressed in extravagant, dandyish zoot suits, and they didn’t stray far from the small neighborhoods where they lived.
Gangs emerged as a means of asserting cultural pride and maintaining control over their communities, and street writing was a way of defining territory. Gang life further evolved after the Los Angeles riots of 1943, known as the Zoot Suit Riots, in which racial tension erupted into a series of brutal confrontations between white military servicemen and the young Pachucos.
In the postwar period, Pachuco culture developed into the Cholo gangs of the 1960s.”
CESARETTI: “When I came to LA in 1969, I drove around, exploring the city. I was going into East LA and the Mexican neighborhoods, and I started seeing writing on walls, and I couldn’t figure out what it meant, but it was beautiful and exotic.”
CESARETTI: “When I first started photographing graffiti, I didn’t know it was written by gang members. But people would come up to me to ask why I was taking pictures, and then they would explain, this means this, that means that. And so I started to understand the language and the symbols. I met Chaz (BOJÓRQUEZ) in 1972-73, and he took me around, exploring the neighborhoods, and he explained everything about the graffiti to me.”
CESARETTI: "In Italy, graffiti is everywhere, and it’s been around for centuries. Pompeii was a huge red-light district— there were houses of prostitution (The Lupanar) , there were smoking rooms where they used to smoke opium, and people would write notes on the walls or names or leave messages to each other, like, “So-and-so, she’s fantastic, you should try her next time.” So merchant marines in ancient times would come to Pompeii and say, “Hey, let’s look for Marina or so-and-so.
"In Italian, "sgraffiare" (Sgraffito) means 'to scratch the surface'—you just need a nail or a knife or a rock, or a spray can, and you can leave a message on the walls."
House covered with sgraffito in the village of Pyrgi, Mastichochoria of Chios / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sgraffito#/media/File:Pyrgi_house1.JPG
CESARETTI: Graffiti around the world has merged into a similar style; it all looks the same. But Cholo graffiti remains very strong and pure. The gangs have gotten tougher—they deal in drugs, they have guns—but Cholo style hasn’t changed. And they’re still writing like they did forty years ago.
Street Writers:
A Guided Tour of Chicano Graffiti.
On moving to Los Angeles in 1970, Gusmano Cesaretti was struck by the vibrant visual culture of that city’s Eastside and set about documenting it.
He captured the cars, the fashions, and the tattoos of East LA as well as its Cholo graffiti, a style that was wholly free from New York influence. Cesaretti’s entrée into the local graffiti culture came when he met the young Chaz Bojórquez, a resident of Cypress Park and perhaps the city’s most artistically inclined graffiti writer at the time.
He captured the cars, the fashions, and the tattoos of East LA as well as its Cholo graffiti, a style that was wholly free from New York influence. Cesaretti’s entrée into the local graffiti culture came when he met the young Chaz Bojórquez, a resident of Cypress Park and perhaps the city’s most artistically inclined graffiti writer at the time.
Although the book has long been out of print, its images have circulated for years among graffiti aficionados in multiple generations of Xeroxed copies.
Considered to be the first book published on street art subculture, this photo essay developed when Cesaretti became fascinated with the unique style of Chicano graffiti that was evolving in East Los Angeles.
He teamed up with graffiti legend Chaz Bojorquez, who explained the evolving language among the local street artists as they toured the neighborhood.
Cesaretti recorded Bojorquez as he shot photos, transcribing his words and forming them into the accompanying text.
This book was out of print for decades and reprinted in 2021 by Arte Povera Foto Books.
Rare in the trade, an essential addition to any street art or Chicano studies library.
Considered to be the first book published on street art subculture, this photo essay developed when Cesaretti became fascinated with the unique style of Chicano graffiti that was evolving in East Los Angeles.
He teamed up with graffiti legend Chaz Bojorquez, who explained the evolving language among the local street artists as they toured the neighborhood.
Cesaretti recorded Bojorquez as he shot photos, transcribing his words and forming them into the accompanying text.
This book was out of print for decades and reprinted in 2021 by Arte Povera Foto Books.
Rare in the trade, an essential addition to any street art or Chicano studies library.
Gusmano Cesaretti
Curator and Publisher
Cesaretti has curated many exhibitions, starting with his gallery Cityscape Foto Gallery, which he founded in Pasadena, California in 1977. He was instrumental in arranging the exhibition of several major works by Los Angeles street artists in the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art's blockbuster 2011 Art in the Streets show, including the Chosen Few MC motorcycle club. In 2014 he started publishing Los Angeles FOTOFOLIO, an underground journal of black and white photography by well-known and emerging photographers that is distributed free of charge in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, London, and Mexico City.
Books and exhibitions
Cesaretti's photographs have appeared in many books and magazines as well as several artist monographs, including Street Writers (published by Acrobat Books, 1975), 5 x 5 = 24 (published by xx, 1979), Fragments of Los Angeles (published by Damian/Alleged Press, 2013), and Dentro le Mura (published by Arte Povera, 2014). His work has been exhibited at the Huntington Library, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Smithsonian Institution.
Cesaretti has since worked on nearly a dozen feature films as a producer and has continued to work in documentary photography in Latin America, Haiti, and Southeast Asia.
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