How to Paint Graffiti and Get Away With It

In How to Paint Graffiti and Get Away With It, Steve Lazarides captures a figure shielding their identity behind a book of the same title, with a sprayed Banksy piece visible on the rail bridge behind. The photograph plays directly into the mythology surrounding Banksy: whether or not the artist himself is pictured, the image encapsulates the secrecy, subversion, and performative wit at the heart of his practice.

As Banksy’s original photographer, agent, and close collaborator, Lazarides had unparalleled access to moments of creative spontaneity. Between 1997 and 2008, he amassed an archive of more than 12,000 photographs—rare documents of a cultural force in the making.

How to Paint Graffiti and Get Away With It exemplifies Lazarides’s role as chronicler of this movement, offering collectors not only a record of street art’s rise but a photograph that embodies its central mystery: the blurred line between artist, artwork, and anonymity.