AKAY Blackbook 1986-1990 - Book
[AKAYBLKBK22]

This is a replica of AKAY's first Blackbook. The making of the original began in the fall of 1986, when 16-year-old AKAY pasted a color swatch of spray paint onto the first page of a nondescript, standard-sized sketchbook. Through his nightly additions of sketches, photos, and newspaper clippings until the spring of 1990, the personal document of a prolific graffiti writer became this rather haphazard chronicle of an era of Stockholm graffiti.

There is a brief gap in Akay's meticulous record that occurred just before Christmas 1988, when his father confiscated the Blackbook and locked it in a safe deposit box. His father threatened to throw it in the fire if Akay didn't stop painting graffiti. A few weeks after the Blackbook was taken hostage, two police officers showed up at AKAY's father's house with a search warrant. AKAY and WEIRD were ordered to wait in the kitchen while the police searched AKAY's basement room looking for evidence they could bring against him - photos or sketches, or better yet, all that evidence pasted into a book, along with the dates and locations written next to the works. But thanks to his father's failed parental blackmail attempts (and no thanks to his father's wife, who kept offering coffee and refreshments to the cops), the police found nothing incriminating. The only mildly suspicious thing the police could find was an artfully arranged display of 280 colorful spray cans, AKAY's most prized possession at the time - right after the imprisoned Blackbook - that lit up his windowless room.

Now, over 30 years later, long after its contents can be used as evidence of criminal crimes or manipulative parenting tactics, the Blackbook from AKAY's teenage years has been reproduced and made available for the first time. This is the second edition.

The fold-out pages come in a package with instructions for gluing them in. 

Hardcover, 154 pages. 34x25cm. Text: English, Release date: 2022​.