Ryan (passed out) and Dash (having just written all over Ryan in permanent marker), 2002.
It’s hard to remember exactly when I met Dash. It seems like we were immediately best friends. I guess I met him through Earsnot in the late 90s. Back then he was a graffiti writer known as Sace. He and Earsnot started the graffiti crew IRAK. They were the biggest vandals in the city. He was number one on the vandal squad’s most-wanted list. But they never got him. He somehow always got off or got away.
He was the wildest kid I’ve ever known. He would tag everything and be running up on rooftops and climbing fire escapes. I remember when I first met him, he had just done a fill-in on the side of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was insane. He climbed out on a tiny ledge on the outside of the bridge and did a huge “Sace.”
Dash and I bonded instantly over photography. One of our favorite books to look at and talk about was American Pictures by Jacob Holdt. We were always taking photos. We loved to document our adventures and then compare them later. He carried his Polaroid camera everywhere. His photos were from the heart. He had a loving obsession with taking photographs and the worst case of ADD you could ever imagine. I always assumed that’s why he shot Polaroids. I think even waiting a minute for the image to develop was hard for him. One time, he wouldn’t give me a bump of coke unless I did it off of Earsnot’s big black dick. Of course I did, and he took a photo of it and I think it’s one of his most famous photographs.
Read more and see more photos at VICE magazine Via (Artobserved)
