Bathroom Graffiti

the long version

If you’ve ever used a public restroom, chances are you’ve read some bathroom graffiti, or at least noticed it. Often bawdy, funny and smart, sometimes illegible, it is a ubiquitous means of expression found across the United States and all over the world. Do the private, intimate moments in the bathroom provide people the opportunity to freely express themselves, leaving little nuggets of truth and insight for the next user? If you ask Mark Ferem, the answer is yes. Ferem has spent the past several years collecting and compiling photographs of exceptional bathroom graffiti, making for the perfect bathroom book. Divided up into thematic sections like "Men’s Rooms," "Women’s Rooms," "Art" and "Politics," unlike other graffiti books, the examples in Bathroom Graffiti are not so much about graffiti as an art form as much as they are about graffiti as the result of personal expression, which will never find its way into galleries or ad campaigns