Do it in the streets!

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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  • Time in the city: Walking the Night

    Le Grand Jeu 15, passage de Ménilmontant, Paris, France

    Over the course of two nights, Manhattan’s Lower East Side becomes both setting and subject in time in the city, a photo zine shot entirely by New York–based photographer Alain […]

  • Loopera: A Life in the Margins

    Le Grand Jeu 15, passage de Ménilmontant, Paris, France

    Some stories survive not through archives, but through the scenes that carried them. Active between Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, Liza (1958–2001) was a defining yet often overlooked figure of […]

  • Bordeaux90 — The Birth of a Graffiti Scene

    Le Grand Jeu 15, passage de Ménilmontant, Paris, France

    Before becoming a movement, a scene often begins with a few teenagers testing the city. In the early 1990s, Bordeaux saw the emergence of a graffiti scene shaped by freedom, […]