TIME’S AGAINST US – Poison

Time’s Against Us by Veleno recounts a personal journey within Italian writing, starting in the province of Caserta in the 1990s and from a unique vantage point: a balcony overlooking a railway depot.

It was there that Valerio “Veleno” began to read a language made of wildstyle, throw-ups, and tags, watching the letters traverse the territory on railway carriages. The railway became his first point of contact with a culture that would profoundly influence his way of seeing the city, people, and public space.

Through archival photographs, documents, testimonies, and personal reflections, the book reconstructs a story that intertwines individual experience with the evolution of writing.

From the province of Caserta to writing

In Time’s Against Us, the province is not simply a backdrop. The countryside, asphalt, stations, and railway depots form an apparently peripheral environment that instead becomes a place for observation, experimentation, and engagement.

The quick gesture of bombing coexists with the search for style, the study of letters, and a constant attention to what happens around. Writing thus emerges not only as a visual practice, but as a tool for knowledge and presence in urban space.

An archive of 1990s graffiti culture

One of the most interesting aspects of the volume is the account of an era before digital communication. Connections between writers were made through: printed photographs, letters and correspondence, face-to-face meetings, travel, the exchange of sketches and materials, and the observation of moving trains. A network built slowly, in which images and information traveled physically from one city to another.

The book restores this analog dimension, showing how even a peripheral reality could be transformed into a creative laboratory connected to a much broader scene.

Style, belonging, and movement

Time’s Against Us by Veleno explores different levels of writing culture: stylistic research, bombing, territory, friendships, travel, and the construction of identity.

The original and unpublished material allows us to read the author's journey within the social and generational context in which it developed.

What emerges is a story that certainly speaks of graffiti, but above all of time, belonging, formation, and movement, showing how writing can become a way to interpret the place where you grow up and build relationships beyond its borders.

Time’s Against Us published by Showdesk

A publication aimed at writers, graffiti enthusiasts, independent book collectors, and anyone interested in the history of Italian urban subcultures told through direct testimonies and archival materials.

You can find this and other books dedicated to graffiti, urban art, and street culture in the ‘Bookstore‘ section of the website.