![]() is presented together with a contemporary collection, which gives a unique insight in the history of Cholo writing from an aesthetic point of view. For the first time ever a historical series of photographs from the early 1970s in L.A. The book Cholo Writing explores the genesis of these specific letterforms that paradoxically gave a visual identity to Los Angeles’ infinite banal suburbia. It has had a major influence on the visual expressions of Californian popular culture, including the lowrider, surf, skate and hip-hop movements. Cholo writing or placas can be seen as cousins of the baroque gothic calligraphies typical of Mexico, as a genuine expression of a border culture between Mexico and the United States. Cholo writing originally constitutes the vernacular handstyle created by the Mexican gangs in Los Angeles as far back as the 1940s: a neglected phenomenon that has a specific place in the history and development of the urban graffiti of the Western world, it is probably the oldest form of the “graffiti of names” in the 20th century, with its own aesthetic, evident long before the explosion in the early 1970s in New York. In this interview Chastanet gives us a condensed lesson in Cholo’s history.Ĭover of the book, Cholo Writing: Latino Gang Graffiti in Los Angeles by François Chastanet ( click here for a look inside ).Ĭhastanet: The term cholo derives from an Aztec word xolotl meaning ‘dog’ that was later turned on its head and used as a symbol of pride by the Mexican-American community in the context of the ethnic power movements of the 1960s, from which emerged the idea of La Raza or Chicano nationalism (e.g., Brown Berets in Watsonville). ![]() His current analysis illuminates how important these cultural writing (and tagging) forms are to their makers, and how they mark territories much like flags and coats of arms. ![]() Chastanet, an architect, graphic designer, typographer and photographer from France, has spent much of his time documenting graffiti and its relationship to architecture. This unique typographic language has been documented in a new book, Cholo Writing: Latino Gang Graffiti in Los Angeles ( Dokument Press), by François Chastanet, who previously published a photographic survey of graffiti in São Paulo, Pixaçao(disclosure: I contributed the foreword). Unlike its bulbous comic counterpart on the East Coast, Cholo has roots in curiously formal calligraphic and black letter traditions. Cholo writing is the style of graffiti used by Mexican gangs in Los Angeles.
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