Artist Alex Lukas’s ‘Written Names Fanzine’ Documents Names Crafted in Public Places with Nails, Tar, Bark and Bubblegum

Charlie was here; and Joe was here; and somebody wrote, “Mom.” 

In the late 1960s, people started hammering their names in nails on the wooden railroad ties near where artist Alex Lukas, an assistant professor of publishing and printmaking at UC Santa Barbara, grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He walked by the string of names for years, but it wasn’t until 2016, upon learning the old rail ties were being removed, that he returned to photograph them. 

The photos became the source material for the first issue of “Written Names Fanzine,” Lukas’s publication dedicated to documenting and transcribing occurrences of hyper-localized, unsanctioned public name writing. This summer, he released his 12th edition, featuring found names stuck in bubble gum in San Luis Obispo.