Graffiti World: Street Art from Five Continents

Nicholas Ganz's 2004 survey of graffiti and street art across five continents, at the time the most comprehensive book on the subject and a fixture of the wave of street-art publishing that followed.

The book traces the movement from anonymous New York spray-can writing of the late 1960s to a global practice taking in stickers, stencils, posters and murals. Arranged first by continent and then by the artists' noms de plume, it presents more than 2,000 illustrations by over 150 artists, among them Banksy and Os Gêmeos, with interviews and statements from many of them; each continent also gets a foldout of local work. Edited by Tristan Manco, author of Stencil Graffiti, and produced as an oversized hardcover with three 8-page gatefolds, a 4-page foldout and a jacket that opens into a poster.

Ganz, who paints as Keinom, is a graffiti artist based in Essen, Germany, and travelled widely to gather the material. He followed this volume with Graffiti Women: Street Art from Five Continents (Abrams, 2006), and an updated edition of Graffiti World appeared in 2009.