It was New Year’s Eve when I arrived in one of Holland’s most modern cities: Rotterdam. Little did I know the streets had transformed into a war zone, where everyone was exploding Cobra bombs and lighting personal fireworks on every corner. It’s in this chaotic ambiance that I first met MJay and his boys, some of Rotterdam’s finest chilleurs who reminded me a lot of my mooks back home. We partied into 2012 while drinking an assortment of liquor and blowing up lampposts, while the night skies blazed with fireworks until the break of dawn.

It was only after the night’s drunken shenanigans that I discovered the homie MJAY had an interest in photography. His talent was not only limited to blowing up Cobra bombs and mooking it out, but he had a great eye for photography and definite skills when it came to this discipline. What captured my attention the most was that his subject matter reflected the vagabond lifestyle and the InterRail movement. Any photography student out there can come up with professional studio portraits or pretty postcard scenery, but it’s only the rare breed like MJAY that has access to the documentation of Vandalism missions or the trials and tribulations of the street life.

For those who don’t know, the InterRail movement is a particular way of life for graffiti writers in Europe. With the proximity of countries and non-existing borders, InterRail passes give you unlimited access to any train destination on the continent for a period of a month. Writers travel from city to city with the sole purpose of painting the transit systems and getting up. It’s a lifestyle where you live on the bare minimum, steal everything on the way, sleep a few hours a night, scope out yards in every new city and destroy the fuck out of each subway system… all in a hardcore and intense trip. Call it the purest form of graffiti freedom. Today, Mook-Life spotlights one of Rotterdam’s finest by focusing on the InterRail and street life movement he lives every day. A picture is worth a thousand words, and you can feel the adventure pouring its heart out in each one of these frames. We present to you the lifestyles through the lens of MJAY.

For more of that visual crack, check out MJAY’s websites:
www.mjayphotography.com
www.humanster.com