In just about every movie set in New York City in the 1970s and 80s there’s an establishing shot with a graffiti-covered subway. Saturday Night Fever That graffiti was like illegible technicolor ...

On this day, May 12, in 1989, the last graffiti-covered New York City subway car was retired. The underground graffiti movement took form in the late '60s and early '70s.

This is also the era in which subway cars served as a canvas for graffiti artists—important for New York’s cultural history, but not exactly beloved by the transit authority.

By offering readers a glimpse of seldom-seen catacombs deep in the NYC subway system, Beneath the Streets helps document a history of graffiti art that has been largely preserved beneath the streets.

Still, subway graffiti persisted. For two decades, the MTA failed miserably—sometimes laughably—in its attempts to fix the problem. Like the time it decided to repaint 7,000 subway cars white.

Martha Cooper is a photojournalist based in New York City and Baltimore, who is known for her images of graffiti artists and urban culture. Her work will be exhibited at New York City’s Steven ...

But after that number fell again to 208 in 2020, according to the MTA, subway graffiti shot up in 2021 and is on pace to blow past the 300 total reports from last year — with 89% occurring in ...

A history of New York Magazine’s stories about problems with the MTA and NYC’s ... Half the subway trains — or about 3,000 cars — are now graffiti-free. There are 1,375 new subway cars ...

A New York City subway car in 1976. Graffiti on the trains was a divisive issue at the time, but the artform long ago moved above ground, into studios and galleries. Credit ...

UNION SQUARE, Manhattan (WABC) -- At a time when most are still avoiding the subway because of COVID-19, artist Devon Rodriguez is drawn to the rails. "I had to capture this, put in my art because ...

But by the 1980s, graffiti covered almost every car, and the subway system On this day, May 12, 1989, the last graffiti-covered New York City subway car was retired.