Dems Photo Archive

©tom stoye

Looking back, I wish I had made a better effort to educate myself and become more familiar with Detroit's graffiti history.  People would always talk about "back in the day," but I mostly tuned it out because I was so fixated on getting the photographs I wanted.

Dems was a graffiti writer I knew, who had boxes of old school graffiti pictures, and regretfully, I never took advantage of them as a resource to understanding the history of what came before I started my project. He not only had well known writers like Justo, Fel, Fohr and Army, but he had also archived all of the other writers who were painting back then; obscure names that not everyone might know today.

In the present, I often spend hours sorting out digital files, so that they end up being cataloged and properly organized if I ever want to go back and look up an older photograph. Dems had a similar system, but unlike mine it was all analog. It seems antiquated by todays standards, but looking at his boxes of photographs, it makes me think of how rapidly things have changed.

I don't regret making the switch from film to digital, because I have truly embraced the digital era, but what I realize now is, that when I started my graffiti project back in 2003, we were all in a period of transitioning away from film. Everyone had flip phones and they had horrible documentation of their finished pieces once they completed them.  A couple guys had crappy point and shoot cameras, so looking back, I provided a valuable service as far as documenting street-side pieces for there collections. Funny how all that has changed now, with digital files replacing what people in the 21st century now describe as a"hard copy."

This conjures up thoughts of the iconic photographer Walker Evans, who was once described as someone who could see the present as if it were already the past. Dems collection reminds me of how important it is as a photographer, to be cognoscente of what will be important 10 years after you take a photograph. Time will tell.