Accompanied by stunning full-page, full-color reproductions and photographs of works in situ—including many that have been lost to time­–photographer and street art expert Alessandra Mattanza’s impassioned and informed text follows Banksy’s career trajectory from creator of message-laden stencils on London’s city walls to a sought-after champion of human and environmental rights.

She investigates many of the key images that populate Banksy’s work—animals, children, historic figures, balloons, cartoon characters, police officers, and others. She shows how Banksy’s oeuvre has expanded beyond graffiti and stenciling and how his art has helped support his activism in a variety of causes—from calls for peace in the Middle East to the preservation of the natural environment. Best of all she helps readers make sense of the rather unusual path Banksy has chosen—an artist who uses his global platform to raise awareness about the underserved, rather than to his own celebrity.

Readers will come away with a new understanding of how Banksy helped transform an illegal act of criminal damage into a high art form, and how, by ridiculing institutionalized art, he has achieved enormous fame within those very institutions.