From Archives to Shelves
Le Grand Jeu bookshop was not born from a retail project, but from excess. Too many books, too many duplicates, and a simple realization: circulation could finance research, encounters, and a space where underground cultures would gradually find a home.
Books Before the Bookshop
Before Le Grand Jeu became a bookshop, books were not objects of fetishization — they were tools for building understanding, access, and shared cultural knowledge.
Too Visible, Poorly Told
Before becoming a bookshop, a journal, or a long-term editorial project, Le Grand Jeu also emerged from exhibitions—but not as an end in themselves. This text retraces how curating urban art exhibitions became a way to test narratives, expose methodological limits, and eventually reveal the need for a structure capable of holding research over time.
ZIFU: Writing Across West Africa
Graffiti as a way of life, Abidjan as a playground, West Africa as an open-air lab. In this long-form interview, Zifu looks back at two decades of painting across the region — from early throw-ups to cross-country missions where police, borders and broken rollers shape each night differently. A panoramic look at one of the continent’s most prolific writers.
Post Vandalism: The Art of Breaking to Rebuild
Interview by Andrea Ceresa with artist and archivist Stephen Burke, exploring how Post Vandalism turns cracks, ruins and street instincts into a new visual language.
Graffiti Beyond Borders: A Conversation with Pablo Allison
From Baghdad, photographer Pablo Allison documents Iraq’s unseen walls—where tags, slogans, and murals echo decades of conflict and youth resistance. A conversation with Christian Omodeo for Le Grand Jeu.
Art & Place Conference Saarbrücke
In 2025, Le Grand Jeu has taken part in the Art & Place Conference, an international forum dedicated to critical perspectives on urban art and public space. On this occasion, we shared our experience at the crossroads of independent publishing, archiving, and street culture, highlighting the role of printed matter in documenting and circulating alternative histories.
Moniker Art Fair New York
For its New York edition, Moniker Art Fair placed publishing at the heart of the event. In May 2018, Le Grand Jeu curated the fair’s bookstore, turning it into a space for research and exchange around street and urban cultures.
Diagonals
Diagonals captures a turning point in L’Atlas’ practice. Produced in collaboration with Le Grand Jeu, this limited artist’s book explores a new formal language built on diagonals, where calligraphy, urban markings, and printmaking converge.
Moniker Art Fair London
At Moniker Art Fair, books became part of the conversation. For the fair’s 10th edition in London, Le Grand Jeu joined an international platform where street art, publishing, and critical perspectives met—affirming the book as a key tool for documenting and transmitting urban cultures.
White Street Market
In 2018, Le Grand Jeu has been part of White Street Market. From Ricky Powell’s photography to pop-up bookstores and talks, Milan became a temporary hub for street culture, publishing, and encounters.
Loading. Street Art in the Digital Age
Loading. Street Art in the Digital Age explores what happens to street art when walls meet screens. Born in the streets, urban art has long travelled through images — photographs, videos, feeds. This immersive exhibition captures a moment of transition, where murals circulate globally, images outlive places, and the city itself becomes a moving archive.
Crossboarding
Crossboarding: An Italian Paper History of Graffiti Writing and Street Art maps Italy’s engagement with graffiti and street art through a unique lens: its printed history. Drawing on a wide range of books, magazines, and catalogues, the publication brings together 120 carefully selected titles to trace how urban writing and mural practices have developed, been documented, and debated over time.
Events
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Dérives Picturales : Anti-Style Practices
Le Grand Jeu 15, passage de Ménilmontant, Paris, FranceDérivés picturales brings together graffiti works that step outside established codes. Photographed mainly in Paris, with incursions into Lille, Nantes, Brussels, Berlin, and Athens, the fanzine traces an alternative urban […]
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White Hat — Inside a Hacked Art World
Le Grand Jeu 15, passage de Ménilmontant, Paris, FranceIn contemporary art spaces shaped by visibility and power, some gestures choose disruption. White Hat — “Hacking the Systems” documents illegal banner interventions carried out in major art institutions, from […]
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Rideaux de Fer #1 — Paris Behind Closed Shutters
Le Grand Jeu 15, passage de Ménilmontant, Paris, FranceOver Paris, closed shutters turn into silent witnesses of the city’s everyday life. Rideaux de Fer #1, the first issue of the magazine edited by Éditions Quartier Rouge, transforms over […]
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Untilted25‘ – Streets in Motion
Le Grand Jeu 15, passage de Ménilmontant, Paris, FranceIn the streets where people gather and voices rise, photography becomes a witness. Untilted25’ captures the rhythm, intensity, and fleeting gestures of public demonstrations across four European cities, turning ephemeral […]
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Queens Boulevard – A Winter Walk Across New York
Le Grand Jeu 15, passage de Ménilmontant, Paris, FranceQueens Boulevard, a major New York thoroughfare stretching over 11 kilometers, walked end to end in winter. With his medium format 6×6 analog camera, Simon Souchois captures storefronts, signs, and […]