9 graffiti and contemporary art books and 2 magazine issues from Dokument Press

Our dear friends iZZY iZVNE, the winner of the 2018 Un-hidden Bucharest Open Call, and Tobias Barenthin Lindblad, author, lecturer and editor at Dokument Press, whom we interviewed in 2019, visited Bucharest in the days just at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. We were super happy to meet them and enjoyed our time together, exchanging ideas, stories and, given such mild wintertime, we strolled a bit to discover graffiti and street art in Bucharest. With great excitement, we received from Tobias two books published by Dokument Press, which quickly inspired new ideas for our future endeavours. Upon his return to Stockholm, Tobias sent a package full of amazing books and graffiti magazines our way which completely made our jaws drop so we couldn’t wait to share all the titles with you, the feeder readers. You can find them all in the Dokument Press shop which carries the Dokument Press Publishing and others’ titles, magazines and movies which spread knowledge about art, photography, design, music, fashion and alternative cultural expressions, from around the world.

Should you wish to read the books and magazines, you’re welcome to schedule a visit to our office using the contact form, which you can find in the lower part of the screen.

Graffiti Cookbook (soft cover)

By: Björn Almqvist, Tobias Barenthin Lindblad, Mikael Nyström, Torkel Sjöstrand
Size (cm): 17x24x1 Pages: 140 Language: English Year: 2015 Country: SWE Binding: Soft Cover

A rich source of inspiration for anyone interested in do-it-yourself culture.
Graffiti Cookbook is a guide to the materials and techniques used within today’s most creative and progressive art movement.

In hundreds of pictures and illustrations and a dozen of interviews with some of the world’s most famous artists the authors show how graffiti is made. From spray techniques and hand styles to tools and style analysis, Graffiti Cookbook takes us on a trip around the world in the search of the tricks and trades of graffiti writers. After hundreds of books filled with pictures of graffiti published in the last few years finally one is showing how the artists work.
Graffiti Cookbook is filled with tips and examples of how to create your own piece, tag and throw up. These techniques can be used on all kinds of materials, textile, glass, metal, concrete or wood. Graffiti Cookbook gives an unique insight into the alternative art world and is a rich inspiration source for those interested in do-it-yourself-culture.
Swet, Jurne, Mad C, Skil, Egs and Chob are some of the featured artists in the book.

Magic City: The Art of The Street, Stockholm

By: Carlo McCormick
Size (cm): 21,5x28x1,5 Pages: 240 Language: English, Swedish Year:2017 Country: Sverige Binding: Soft Cover

Our MAGIC CITY is a place and a non-place. It is not the physical city of brick and mortar but rather the urban space of internalized meanings. It is the city as subject and canvas, neither theme park nor stage set, but an exhibition showcasing more than 40 of the most original and celebrated artists working on and in the city today. This is a celebration of the universal character of cities as well as a love letter to their infinite diversity. Cities have been designed to facilitate work, but artists have transformed them into playgrounds for the imagination and ideas. This is the invitation called outside our window by friends and strangers with restless spirits: come out and play. MAGIC CITY -The Art in the Streets features the work of: AIKO, AKRylonumerik, Andy K, Asbestos, Benuz, Jens Besser, Biancoshock, Mark Bode, Bordalo II, Ori Carino & Benjamin Armas, Henry Chalfant, Martha Cooper, Isaac Cordal, Daze, Brad Downey, Tristan Eaton, Ron English, Shepard Fairey, FINO’91, Ganzeer, Anders Gjennestad, Ben Heine, HERAKUT, Icy & Sot, Leon Keer, Loomit, MadC, OAKOAK, Odeith, OLEK, Qi Xinghua, Replete, ROA, Jaime Rojo, Skewville, SpY, Truly, Juandres Vera, WENU, Dan Witz, Yok & Sheryo and Ernest Zacharevic.

Forms of Rockin’

By: Anssi Arte
Size (cm): 22,5×21,5×1,8 Pages: 125 Year: 2015 Country: SE Binding: Hard Cover

“The idea of style and competing for the best style is the key to all forms of rockin’.” – Style Wars, 1983.

Are subcultures, like graffiti, floating free in their own space, or are they connected to the rest of society? In Forms of Rockin’, graffiti styles for the first time are connected to graphic design and other popular culture expressions such as music, fashion, photography, industrial design and movies. Anssi Arte analyses some of the most powerful visual symbols of the 1970s, 80s and 90s and compares design, display typefaces and graffiti styles. The visual styles of James Brown, Blade Runner, the Memphis group and grunge music all appear together with classic fonts and graffiti writers.
The clear yet analytical narrative and carefully crafted visualizations make it appealing to both graphic design aficionados as well as graffiti enthusiasts. But Forms of Rockin’ is more than that. This is a must for everybody interested in contemporary popular culture and design history.

Forms of Rockin’ traces and defines the stylistic conventions in graffiti letterforms that have become iconic and globally acknowledged ideals. From the early New York tags to the mid-1990s ugly-fresh styles of Scandinavia, Forms of Rockin’ tells the story of how popular culture and graffiti styles influences each other.

Anssi Arte (b. 1981) is a Helsinki-based graphic designer specialized in visual identities and brand architecture. He has a formal (MA) education in graphic design from the Aalto University of Arts, Design and Architecture.
Besides graphic design he is a graffiti enthusiast since childhood, specialized in studying and practising the traditional European and Scandinavian letterforms and aesthetics.

Rubin: New York / Scandinavia

By: Björn Almqvist & Tony Rubin Sjöman
Size (cm): 21×26 Pages: 112 Language: English Year:2016 Country: SE Binding: Hard Cover

Tony “Rubin” Sjöman has become a staple of the street art scene of New York City and beyond. His abstract and geometrical pieces are rooted in traditional graffiti but break the rules of the craft with its muted color palette and Scandinavianly clean lines. The art book Rubin: New York / Scandinavia brings you inside his studio, into art galleries, and takes you on a journey to the streets of New York, marked by his large scale murals.

Rubin was nine years old when he wrote his first tag. The son of Finnish immigrant workers to Sweden he was raised in the working class housing projects of Bergsjön in Gothenburg, Sweden. Surrounded by grey concrete and tram tunnels, the walls whispered his name. He grabbed a spray can and set out on a journey that he’s still on today.

“Something happens when I press the cap and draw the first line of a piece. The expectation that takes hold of me is so strong that everything else around me ceases to exist.”

Rubin draws inspiration from his gritty upbringing, the tram tunnels where he first learned the craft and from the contrasts that have formed him into the artist he is today: the skyline of the hectic metropolis versus the serenity of the Nordic nature, all perfectly balanced in his art. With raw talent and relentless hard work Rubin has created a unique aesthetic that carries the art form beyond its boundaries.

La Jardinera – Valeria Montti Colque

By: Macarena Dusant
Size (cm): 17x24x1 Pages: 124 Language: English Year: 2017 Country: SE Binding: Soft Cover

Valeria Montti Colque’s vibrant work deals with issues of gender, power and transnationality. Montti Colque has a peculiar style that is both recognizable and alien. She builds up a world of her own by mixing influences from popular culture, such as hip hop and punk, with saints, devils, female icons and other mythical figures.

Identity is central to Valeria Montti Colque’s work. She explores identities with the help of characters that symbolize strength, love, grief, trauma and gender power structures. The Jokerita is a female Joker, an outsider that can be both dangerous and a jester. The Mountain is another character that represents different entities depending on the context. The mountain itself is alive. It provides man with material and protection in the form of caves. The Menstruation mountain is sacred and symbolizes the eternal life cycle. Both the mountain and menstruation are essential to humans, but their powers have been relegated to oblivion or ignorance today.

Valeria Montti Colque’s work is about finding oneself as an individual in an increasingly mobile and global time.
Valeria Montti Colque has shown her work nationally and internationally. She has received several artist’s grants and she has participated in a large number of performances, public artworks and workshops.
Montti Colque has been represented at the office of the Swedish Minister of Culture.
“She raises questions about gender and ethnicity, national borders, life and death, and the perpetuation of heritage and traditions. Some of it I can recognise in myself. How can anyone deal with a multicultural legacy, and how does it affect the person I am today, the things we do together, building the society of today?“ says Sweden’s Minister of Culture Alice Bah Kuhnke on the subject of Valeria Montti Colque’s art in Sweden’s biggest daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

Ollio: Monster och mönster av Jonathan Josefsson

By: Jonathan Josefsson
Size (cm): 25,5×19,5×1,5 Pages: 96 Language: Swedish Year: 2015 Country: SE Binding: Hard Cover

Book in Swedish about the artist Jonathan “Ollio” Josefsson.

Finsta Graphics (Eng ed.)

Size (cm): 21×24 Pages: 96 Language: English Year: 2009 Country: SE

Finsta is one of the most eyecatching illustrators and designers out of the European graffiti scene. For the past ten years his work was spread beyond his native Sweden.

Finsta’s work is an universe of its own, presenting characters, settings and artefacts such as the Finstablaster,
enormous ghettoblasters in wood with a painted front cooler than any real boom-box.
Finsta’s graffiti styles are completely unique with pieces that weave themes that permeate the
letters. Many of the letters are actually characters. His paintings, comic strips, street art, graffiti styles and commercial work are all done in the same unique style, influenced by both graffiti lettering,
low-brow and comic artists like Robert Crumb and Jim Phillips.
But most of all, Finsta’s work is full of the unexpected. He has the gift to invent new settings, just by adding a little touch. In the most part, it’s Finsta’s humour that plays the main role. A humour that he likes to share.

Knowing Zasd by his Walk vol I-III – Thomas Bratzke

By: Rose Pacult
Size (cm): 17x24x2 Pages: 158 Language: English Year: 2016 Country: SE Binding: Hard Cover

Thomas Bratzke (a.k.a. Zasd, Zast) from Berlin is a central figure within the experimental urban art scene of the past two decades.
His performances, sculptures, installations, and interventions transcend the genre of graffiti.

He deconstructs and reconstructs the quotidian, from commonplace objects to the fabric of the city, and even engages with social systems and structures, to create a new, more vibrant and interactive reality for his audience.
As a part of the Berlin-based collective jazzstylecorner, Bratzke has expanded his practice to incorporate collaboration and improvisation, central tenets of the graffiti world, with more atypical ingredients such as jazz music, 3-D projection, kinetic sculpture, and digital media.
Thomas Bratzke has exhibited in Berlin, New York City, Tokyo, and in many cities in Europe and internationally. Here, for the first time, can be seen a comprehensive survey of his work.
The book contains of three parts,
Part 1: Plates, Presentation of selected photographs of all mentioned projects of Thomas Bratzke´s body of work)
Part 2: The House of Thomas Bratzke, written by Rose Pacult
Part 3: Map of Works

Closer together – This is the Future of Cities

By: Alexander Ståhle
Size (cm): 17×24 Pages: 192 Language: English Year: 2016 Country: SE Binding: Hard Cover

Cities are growing faster than ever before, but why? Because they foster proximity. Nearness to work, friends and culture has always been a driving force in urban development, from the first cities in which people walked everywhere to today’s car-powered cities with their scattered suburbs, highways and narrow pavements.
Many scholars, politicians and civic groups are beginning to question the way cities are adapted to car traffic as it causes distance rather than proximity. As a result, a radical urban transformation has begun. What will the cities of the future look like? How will we live our lives and how will new technologies – self-driving cars for example – and new city planning ideals affect urban development? What would happen in the event of a major fuel shortage or climate change? Closer Together presents a unique future study and trend analysis developed by 400 experts and scholars. Three potential scenarios selected by 5,000 people through their vote in the media are presented via text and images. The result of their vote is as clear as the emerging trend: cities will have to change. They will need to be more condensed and user-friendly for pedestrians and people who travel by bike.
Alexander Ståhle’s book Closer Together explains the political and economic forces and the subcultures that drive change in terms of urban environment and transport, as well as the way cities need to transform in order to bring people closer together and, not least, the way it will bring about greater equality and prosperity.

Alexander Ståhle is a city researcher at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, and CEO of the research facility Spacescape, which works with urban development in Stockholm, New York, Oslo, and Kiruna. He is a popular speaker on urban planning around the world, and frequently contributes to media opinion pages and specialized publications. Alexander lives in central Stockholm with two children and no car.

UP 39

Size (cm): 21,5x28x0,5 Pages: 64 Language: English Year: 2008 Country: SWE

The changes we tried out in UP38 has been successful and UP38 is all sold out. We are sure UP39 will do just aswell, take a look at what it has to offer:
We meet Stockholm native Ridler, style master Bates, we visit Balkan cities like Sofia, Budapest, Sarajevo, Belgrade and Istanbul and once again we cross the Atlantic. This time to take a closer look at the Windy City, Barak Obama and Al Capones Chicago with its’ subway crazy writers. We take a closer look at Iz the Wizs’ classic piece “Hell Iz For Children” and of course the latest words on the street and the new books.

UP 42

Size (cm): 21,5x28x1 Pages: 64 Language: English Year: 2010 Country: SWE

UP 42 – “the busted issue”, takes a closer look at getting busted for illegal graffiti. We’ve spoken to lawyers, busted writers, checked out vandal squads from all over the world and written down the “chase” stories. Make sure to have a read once the issue is out, we’ll hope that enlightens you in a way or another. On top of that we’re focusing on french globetrotter Honet and the Skids crew from Greece. We’ve been drinking vodka in the Ukraine, spoken to Danish style legend Jest a k a X-paks and while in Copenhagen taken a closer look at the roof tops of the city. We’ve been to northern Swedens biggest city Umeå, and in this issue Jacob Kimvall is analyzing pieces by VIM-pioneers Akay and News. And of course the rumours, the trains, the walls.