Nasty Stuff

(2025)

*** Kickstarter project ***

Delivery scheduled for January 2026.

Craig Castleman interviews and graffiti archive. This is our second publicaton around Craig Castleman work and investigation that led to the beloved and imprescindible book Getting Up.

In 1978, Craig Castleman shaped his first major project on graffiti, which he initially called “Nasty Stuff,” a work that was quickly praised by the prestigious anthropologist Margaret Mead and transformed into a doctoral thesis. This was the seed of the iconic “Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York.” The development of this project was based on Castleman's work as an English teacher at the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan, where he had several classic New York graffiti writers as students. It is in this link between graffiti and teaching that Craig Castleman's documentation and research work must be placed.

As we all know, creative processes have their ups and downs and setbacks, and this was the case with the transformation of “Nasty Stuff” into the iconic “Getting Up”: an improved version of the original “Nasty Stuff” in some respects, but weaker in others. Unfortunately, in 1980, the extensive archive of color and black-and-white photographs that Craig developed was not considered “interesting” by MIT Press. Similarly, the various interviews Castleman conducted with different graffiti actors—graffiti writers, MTA workers, Transit Police and Vandal Squad officers, etc.—were not appreciated either. All of them were used to create “passages” in the book but were not included as such, possibly because they were not considered “commercial.” Craig was particularly upset by this, and today we know that the few editions of “Getting Up” that feature any color photographs are part of the first batch that he insisted on producing at his own expense, against the wishes of MIT Press.

So a great work was published, but the opportunity to publish a near-perfect work was lost, which we are now rescuing.

Publisher: Contorno Urbano
Languages: Spanish, English
Format: Hardcover
Size: 24 x 30 cm
Pages: 356
Retail price: €35
Instagram: @contorno_urbano
Website: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/contornourbano/nasty-stuff-craig-castleman-interviews-and-graffiti-archive