You Can't Win

By Rob Larsen

54 pages, published 12/13/2016

YOU CAN’T WIN is the first collection of graffiti and street art photos from Rob “React” Larsen. Featuring a selection of photos from around the world, YOU CAN’T WIN offers a view of the world of graffiti and street art through the eyes of a long-time practitioner and shameless fan of the subculture.

My first photo-book YOU CAN’T WIN is now available on Magcloud. It’s $19.85 for the squarebound printed version and $4.95 for the PDF. What follows is the intro to the collection.

You Can’t Win explores my relationship with graffiti and street art as a viewer. I’ve offered up my opinion as a practitioner and expert over the years, but this is a different beast. You Can’t Win is born from the way I look at graffiti. My eyes have been dancing over buildings for over thirty years now. I take it all in. I document the same way. International graffiti superstar? I will shoot that. Unknown local tagger on the side of a mailbox? I will shoot that.

Why? All of this stuff is ephemeral. Exposed to the elements all of the murals you see will eventually fade away. Tags, stickers, wheat-pastes and throw-ups are even more fragile. Most won’t ever get the chance to fade away. They can get buffed or gone over by other artists in a matter of hours or days.

I want to capture those brief moments in time. This book reflects that desire.

The first two photos in the book illustrate the breadth of my interest.

The first shot (above) is from the alleys behind Newbury Street in Boston’s Back Bay. For a long time Copley Square was the center of Boston’s graffiti universe. Almost every writer that mattered in the city in the 1980s and 1990s spent some time hanging around Copley Square. Because of that concentrated population, the alleys between Newbury St. and Boylston St., were tagged relentlessly. The door on the following page holds at least 15 years of that history. It was shot around 2001 and I can trace tags from as old as 1986 on there (two of my own are vintage 1987.) Clearly AMAZE is a big graffiti superstar, but I wish he wasn’t even there as he’s covering up some cool history. For me the old ALERT, KID SATEN (START), CEASE, PRANK and SKREAM tags are much more interesting. Everyone has photos of AMAZE. Not everyone has vintage CEASE. What’s more, the alleys have since been buffed. This is likely the only record of what was back there.

The next photo (below) is the complete opposite end of the spectrum. It’s probably the single most-obvious graffiti photo one could take in Boston over the past ten years. But, you know what? Who cares? I love the “GIANT of BOSTON” and I’m happy to share it with all of you.

Throw those two photos in a blender and you’ve got You Can’t Win. I hope you enjoy it.

A partial list of included artists: AMAZE, OS GEMEOS, SABER, RJ, XSM, NERO, SPEK, ICH, AVES, TWIST, PATS, KEM5, SOEM, MISS17, REVS, ALONE, EL MAC, UTAH, NEKST, COST, C215, Jef Aerosol, BASTARDILLA, QUIK, REPS, OCLOCK, 1UP CREW, JENKS, REVOK, EINE, ABOVE, CASH FOR YOUR WARHOL, REMOTE, LASER 314, BACON, MORE124, SKAM, MQ, APEX, OBEY GIANT, MEAR, RISK, SMASH 137, RETNA and INVADER