Photo: Courtesy of Flint Gennari

Picture it: Brooklyn, 1965. Dyslexic and hard-of-hearing, young Roberto Gennari didn’t fit in anywhere and performed poorly at school. A sensitive child, he began to withdraw into his own world, finding pleasure in photography. But it was a fourth-grade social studies class that changed his fate. During a lesson about World War II, the teacher began talking about “Kilroy Was Here,” the doodle made famous by American soldiers that started popping up around the world for years.

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Gennari was hooked. He likened the idea of writing his name on the walls to advertising. He cites Madison Avenue logos and slogans as his primary reference, as well as the work of artist Peter Max, who made his name the centrepieces of his public artworks for the New York City transit system.

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Inspired by the world around him, Gennari began writing cheeky phrases like For Those Who Dare, For Ladies Only, Bad but Not Evil, and The Time Will Come then signing them as “FLINT.” A decade later, his exploits would inspire his high-school classmate Al Diaz, who went on to create SAMO© with Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1977, after FLINT was out of the game.

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In 1970, Gennari borrowed his father’s camera and began photographing New York’s graffiti scene, capturing a culture (destined to take over the world) in its infancy. Gennari, whose photographs span 1970–77, speaks with Dazed about growing up in the first generation of New York City’s graffiti scene.

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