THE FULL INTERVIEW for Concrete Magazine
What is Grifters and who stands behind it? Teh Grifters™ is the frontend of a project which has been in the making for many years, and has involved the studies and synergy of many different subjects, including behavioral, social and reverse psychology, NLP, fine arts, design science, colour theory, geometry and harmonic concepts, marketing, persuasion and sales, behavioural finance and calculus, martial arts, as well as many others. Put simply, though, it is the best thing that ever happened to internet graffiti media: an original photoblog, showing the lifestyle of graffiti writers around our social circle. The focus is on everything that we do before and after the final product - the graffiti piece - is created. Initially it was a representation of our crews that we put into the world, because we were not satisfied with the published pictures in magazines and other internet sites. We have always had a different vision and outlook on our material, which was in a substantial part formed by the unique environment around us; so naturally, no one else was doing it like us and we had to pave our own way through an internet platform. We came to the conclusion that every day we get bombarded with the same pictures of the very same artists, doing all the same pieces, photographed under the same angle, photoshopping away the same mistakes, until people transform this perfection into this mysterious worship of some unknown underground hero. We meant to create something different, much more human and to humorously and intriguingly show all the neat stuff that usually gets left behind, all the pictures around the actions, all the flicks without focus. To take the mask off and show how we live, eat, drink, fuck, puke, what we are like and how we spend our free time. We made it to this point using only cheap and crappy film cameras and we managed to prove and remind, in our opinion, to all the wannabe photographers, that it is not important to have the last model digital camera and the most expensive lens to take a good picture. Instead, it is the flavor, harmony, moment and presence of the flick, which make it unique and emotionally stimulating. Our charisma is not the best and most robotically executed style piece, it is the attitude, fun and energy which we bring to your party. This essentially is, what graffiti means for us, because once the fun is gone, graffiti is just as gone, mechanical, boring and dead. In the beginning the people behind this project were solely from our crews and the concept was to show only our own pictures – where we go, the people we meet and the things we do together. However, over time some of us moved around the globe and the concept started to change. Today, you might catch us around some of our (temporary) headquarters in cities like Paris, Berlin, New York and of course, the biggest and greatest of them all: the glorious city of Sofia, Bulgaria [/sarc]. Since we moved further and further away from