REMEMBERING DASH SNOW, JULY 14, 2009
WORDS AND PHOTOS BY RYAN MCGINLEY
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It’s hard to remember exactly when I met Dash. It seems like we were immediately best friends. I guess I met him through Earsnot in the late 90s. Back then he was a graffiti writer known as Sace. He and Earsnot started the graffiti crew IRAK. They were the biggest vandals in the city. He was number one on the vandal squad’s most-wanted list. But they never got him. He somehow always got off or got away.
He was the wildest kid I’ve ever known. He would tag everything and be running up on rooftops and climbing fire escapes. I remember when I first met him, he had just done a fill-in on the side of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was insane. He climbed out on a tiny ledge on the outside of the bridge and did a huge “Sace.”
Dash and I bonded instantly over photography. One of our favorite books to look at and talk about was
American Pictures by Jacob Holdt. We were always taking photos. We loved to document our adventures and then compare them later. He carried his Polaroid camera everywhere. His photos were from the heart. He had a loving obsession with taking photographs and the worst case of ADD you could ever imagine. I always assumed that’s why he shot Polaroids. I think even waiting a minute for the image to develop was hard for him. One time, he wouldn’t give me a bump of coke unless I did it off of Earsnot’s big black dick. Of course I did, and he took a photo of it and I think it’s one of his most famous photographs.
| Ryan (passed out) and Dash (having just written all over Ryan in permanent marker), 2002. |
My most well-known photo of him,
Dash Bombing, was taken over by the Holland Tunnel, high above the city on a ledge 20 stories up. We spent a lot of time on the High Line when we first met, hanging out and drinking up there. He and Snot did those big rollers. You can still see them from the West Side Highway. Those were the days when we all wore gold fronts that we got from Charlie Gold Cap on Canal Street. Dash always had the best diamond-encrusted ones.
He and Earsnot also loved to tag bums. They would give a bum $20 to let them tag all over his clothes. Bums never change their clothes, so the tags would never get buffed out like on a door or grate. And they just wander the streets. It was amazing advertising and such a genius idea that it still makes me crack up when I think about it.
I remember hanging out at Dash’s infamous apartment on Avenue C. The walls were covered with Saddam Hussein masks, porno magazines, weapons, covers of the
New York Post… His then-wife, Agathe, was always there taking care of us and especially of him. He needed tons of attention. I spent a lot of time photographing his and Agathe’s love affair. They were the first couple to let me take photos of them making love. They had a pet bunny, Gary, named after the graffiti writer Cinik, and a parakeet named Sergeant Slaughter. They would be hopping around when we were hanging out late into the night. When Dash was drunk, he would always tell you how much he loved you. You couldn’t get him to stop singing Rolling Stones songs. Right before the verse, he’d nudge you and sing the words close to your face.
He was one of my first muses. He embodied everything that I wanted to photograph and everything that I wanted to be: irresponsible, reckless, carefree, wild, rich. We were just kids doing drugs and being bad. Out at bars every night. I don’t think we ever saw each other in daylight. We were like vampires. We spent a lot of time sniffing coke in the bathrooms of the Cock (when it was on Avenue A) and the Hole (when it was on Second Avenue). It was so fun to be secretive about it. I’ve probably been in the bathroom of every bar below 14th Street with the guy. Sniffing coke off toilet seats, doing bumps off each other’s fists, and always waking up in the morning with his keys in my pocket or mine in his.
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