By early afternoon on Tuesday (January 1st), the estimated 50 tons of garbage left behind by the crammed crowds of approximately one million partiers, who had descended upon Times Square the night before to ring in the new year, had been cleaned up and by this morning when I passed through the "crossroads of the world" you could not tell that such a large scale, multi-faceted event had taken place there at all. Instead, on this first day of business of the new year for most, New Yorkers were rushing in every direction returning to work or maybe to the gym to live up to their New Year's resolution, many clutching newspapers with front page stories on 2013 predictions. At least two NYC papers reported on changes New Yorkers and New York can expect in 2013. These include a better prepared NYC for another Sandy, and a return of the NY Marathon. Also coming in March is the dreaded but inevitable public transit fare increases when flat train/bus fares will increase from $2.25 to $2.50 and monthly unlimited passes increase from $104 to $112, which still not bad compared to the BART or most other US public transit systems. Another much talked about change to take place this year is in mid-March when the new law banning "big gulp" soda drinks from being sold in NYC goes into effect. This has been both controversial and fodder for late night talk shows since the law was pushed in 2012 by the health conscious mayor Michael M. Bloomberg.

Photo-journalists/authors James and Karla Murray's last two graffiti books (Broken Windows and Burning New York) as well as their very recently published Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York (all three published by Gingko Press) all covered the territory of the five boroughs of New York City.

But for their latest graffiti book, published this week by Prestel, they traveled to Miami, Florida to capture the 200 + vibrant images for this recommended
contemporary art coffee table book.

Simply titled Miami Graffiti, it is an amazing collection that captures the vibrant and stylistically diverse graffiti and murals of Miami, a city that for some reason tends to be overlooked somewhat when it comes to its street art scene. In fact, this is the first book to focus soley on Miami graf. Flipping through the pages upon pages of perfectly shot, bright, colorful panoramic shots, it's immediately evident that the husband and wife team of James and Karla Murray have both a real passion and a true gift for what they do.

For this Amoeblog I invited the photo authors, who I will interview in a few weeks on the New York graf scene, to supply the Amoeblog with some high resolution jpegs of Miami Graffiti from pages I randomly picked, based on my own taste and the variety of styles displayed. I also asked them to say a few words on each shot and the subject captured. Their words are below, with the page of the book each image appears on as well.


p.40) CROME
The artist CROME says, "I always like to incorporate a character into my piece because if you just do letters it can look repetitive. You need something more to look at than just letters."