VNA Magazine #34 with BSA, Martha Cooper, Yasha Young, Selina Miles and More

October 8, 2016 Artists

A constant and influential voice on the contemporary urban art scene for one decade VNA (Very Nearly Almost) has been charting the magnificently murky waters of graffiti and Street Art and many of its most notable discontents. London based with global reach, their story-driven editing and writing has an evergreen quality with a keen eye toward touchstone detail.

VNA Magazine. Issue 34. Cover: Martha Cooper’s photo of Keith Haring painting on the Houston Wall.

Together with carefully selected photography, probing interviews and pithy witticism, VNA imparts an insight about this fluid global phenomenon that few know how to adequately represent. Freights, train writers, tattoo, skater culture, photography, tagging, even the muralists – the wingspan is there. Knowing what kind of work, imagination and expertise goes into producing a serialized print publication, especially in this age of digital, we have always appreciated the magazine and the folks who care enough to create it.

VNA Magazine. Issue 34. Martha Cooper profile.

That’s why we’re especially proud that the BSA Instagram account is spread across two pages of the current issue #34 of VNA. A daily-curated collection, all our photos on BKStreetArt are from Jaime Rojo, not appropriated from other sources and all our followers are organically grown, so the roots are deep and strong. An artist behind the camera, Rojo doesn’t just document the artwork of others, but has his eye on the environment that engenders, cavorts with, frames the so-called “scene”. With 100K photos now under his belt, we think Rojo is starting to get the hang of this thing.

And really, if there was ever a VNA issue to be included in, this is the one! With three of the defining people who have shaped and will shape your experience of graffiti and Street Art – Martha Cooper, Yasha Young, and Selina Miles – all featured, these combined self-made talents pack a punch that spans the last 50 and the next 50 years with no problem at all.

VNA Magazine. Issue 34. Martha Cooper’s shot of Dondi painting trains on the yards.

Cooper’s early photographic documentation of a nascent graffiti scene in NYC is unquestioned (check the cover photo of Keith Haring) and her globe-trotting capturing of Street Art and artistic process is in effect to this very minute when she is in Tahiti for the O’nou Festival.

Once private gallery owner and art dealer and now the founding director of Urban Nation, Yasha Young is an expansive visionary who is daring to jumpstart an audacious project that creates a Berlin museum housing a definitive collection of Urban Contemporary Art intended to exist long after doors open in 2017.

VNA Magazine. Issue 34. BSA Instagram Spotlight with all photos taken by Jaime Rojo around the world.

The 20-something Australian film maker Selina Miles has already re-defined visual storytelling of the graffiti and Street Art scene in only five short years of work in a way that has made her a rising star. We have every confidence that her core strengths and vision are yet to be fully explored and that she will blast open new pathways ahead, so be prepared!

To be included in the mix with these folks and Invader, Seen, Fafi, James Jean, Kai & Sunny, Ghostpatrol, Dave White, Todd Francis, Usugrow, and a series of London photographers in VNA is totally an honor and we sincerely thank Roland Henry for inviting us.