In 1974 a book called The Faith of Graffiti was published in the United States, written by Norman Mailer and illustrated by M. Kurlansky and J. Naar. Here we present six photographs with captions that bring to graffiti the attributes of an almost holy writ, compares the movement with that of rock and roll and places it in the avant-garde of the young street culture that took off in the 1950s.