Martha Cooper is an American photojournalist. She worked as a staff photographer for the New York Post during the 1970s. [2] She is best known for documenting the New York City graffiti scene of the 1970s and 1980s. [3] [4]
In 1984, Cooper and Henry Chalfant published their photographs of New York City graffiti in the book Subway Art, which has been called the graffiti bible [2] [5] and by 2009 had sold half a million copies. [5]
Cooper picked up photography at the age of three. [7] She graduated from high school at the age of 16, [7] earned an art degree at age 19 from Grinnell College. [8] She taught English as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand, journeyed by motorcycle from Bangkok to London and received an anthropology diploma from the University of Oxford. [8] Her first experience in artistic photography began when Cooper was in Japan, and capturing images of elaborate tattoos. [9]
She was a photography intern at National Geographic in the 1960s, and worked as a staff photographer at the New York Post in the 1970s. Her photographs have appeared in National Geographic, Smithsonian and Natural History magazines as well as several dozen books and journals.
Her most known personal work, the New York City graffiti scene of the 1970s and 1980s, began while working at the New York Post. [2] On her return home from the Post she began taking photographs of children in her New York City neighborhood. [7] One day she met a young kid named Edwin Serrano (He3) who helped expose her to some of the graffiti around her neighborhood. [5] Serrano helped to explain to her that Graffiti is an art form and that each artist was actually writing his/her nickname. [2] He introduced her to the graffiti "king", DONDI. [5] [2] Dondi was the first to allow her to accompany him – while he was tagging she would take photos of his work. [7] After meeting with Dondi, Cooper became fascinated with the underground subculture that these graffiti artists had created in New York City. [10] In 1984 she put together a book of photographs illustrating the graffiti subculture called Subway Art. [2] It became known as the Bible of street art. [11]
In the 1980s, Cooper worked briefly in Belize photographing the people and archaeological remains of the Mayan culture at sites such as Nohmul and Cuello.
Cooper lives in Manhattan, but from 2006 to 2016 she was working on a photography project in Sowebo, a Southwest Baltimore neighborhood.
In 2019 she was the subject of a documentary feature Martha: A Picture Story.
Fred Brathwaite, more popularly known as Fab 5 Freddy, is an American visual artist, filmmaker, and hip hop pioneer. He is considered one of the architects of the street art movement. Freddy emerged in New York's downtown underground creative scene in the late 1970s as a graffiti artist. He was the bridge between the burgeoning uptown rap scene and the downtown No Wave art scene. He was immortalized in 1981 when Debbie Harry rapped on the Blondie song "Rapture" that "Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody's fly." In the late 1980s, Freddy became the first host of the groundbreaking hip-hop music video show Yo! MTV Raps.
Style Wars is an American 1983 documentary film on hip hop culture, directed by Tony Silver and produced in collaboration with Henry Chalfant. The film has an emphasis on graffiti, although bboying and rapping are covered to a lesser extent. The film was originally aired on the television network PBS and was subsequently shown in several film festivals to much acclaim, including the Vancouver Film Festival. It also won the Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival.
Leonard Hilton McGurr, known as Futura, and formerly known as Futura 2000, is an American graffiti artist.
Wild Style is a 1983 American hip hop film directed and produced by Charlie Ahearn. Regarded as the first hip hop motion picture, it includes appearances by seminal figures such as Fab Five Freddy, Lee Quiñones, Lady Pink, The Rock Steady Crew, The Cold Crush Brothers, Queen Lisa Lee of Zulu Nation, Grandmaster Flash and ZEPHYR.
Helen Levitt was an American photographer and cinematographer. She was particularly noted for her street photography around New York City. David Levi Strauss described her as "the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time."
ZEPHYR, born Andrew Witten, is a graffiti artist, lecturer and author from New York City. He began writing graffiti in 1975 using the name "Zephyr" in 1977. He is considered a graffiti "elder", who along with Futura 2000, Blade, PHASE 2, CASH, Lady Pink and TAKI 183 invented styles and standards which are still in use.
TAKI 183 is the "tag" of a Greek-American graffitist who was active during the late 1960s and early 1970s in New York City. The graffitist, whose given name is Demetrios, has never revealed his full name.
Henry Chalfant is an American photographer and videographer most notable for his work on graffiti, breakdance, and hip hop culture.
Lady Pink, born Sandra Fabara (1964), is an Ecuadorian-American graffiti and mural artist.
Donald Joseph White, "DONDI" was an American graffiti artist.
Subway Art is a collaborative book by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, which documents the early history of the New York City graffiti movement. Originally published in 1984, the book has been described as a "landmark photographic history". Known by many as ‘the bible’ of graffiti, Subway Art quickly acquired the dubious accolade of becoming one of the most stolen books in the United Kingdom.
George “Crime79” Ibañez is a famous New York City-based graffiti artist. His style is rooted in popular culture and often with political messages.
Sara Rosen was the publisher of Miss Rosen Editions, her own imprint, at powerHouse Books, where she was also Associate Publisher and Publicity & Marketing Director. She left after ten years to start her own company, Miss Rosen.
Graffiti are writing or drawings scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illicitly on a wall or other surface in a public place. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings. Graffiti, consisting of the defacement of public spaces and buildings, remains a nuisance issue for cities.
Cheryl Dunn is an American documentary filmmaker and photographer. She has made two feature films, Everybody Street (2013) and Moments Like This Never Last (2020). She has had three books of photographs published: Bicycle Gangs of New York (2005), Some Kinda Vocation (2007) and Festivals are Good (2015).
Laurence Bruce Fink was an American photographer and educator, best known for his black-and-white images of people at parties and in other social situations.
Islamic graffiti is a genre of graffiti created by people who usually relate to the Middle East or North Africa, using Arabic or other languages for social or political messages. It is a popular art genre created by "artists, graffiti writers, designers and typographers from the Middle East and around the world who merge Arabic calligraphy with the art of graffiti writing, street art and urban culture."
Jack Stewart was an American artist. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, he began private art lessons when he was seven. When he was about nine he went to classes at the High Museum of Art. In his early to mid-teens he apprenticed to the sculptor/painter Steffen Thomas. During WWII he served in Patton's Third Army as a combat infantryman, entering combat in the Battle of the Bulge. After the war he earned a BFA degree at Yale University, where he studied with Josef Albers and Willem de Kooning. He studied architecture at Columbia University and later earned MA and Ph.D. degrees at New York University. In 1976 Stewart married painter and art administrator Regina Serniak Stewart. His first wife and their son are deceased.
Spraycan Art is the first book that documented the initial stages of the worldwide spread of New York City Subway graffiti style and subculture. Authored by Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff and published by Thames & Hudson on September 1, 1987.
James Prigoff was an American photographer, author, and lecturer focusing on public murals, graffiti, and spraycan art. He has traveled extensively throughout the world documenting these art forms, and his personal archive of 100,000 slides may well be the most comprehensive of any individual mural and graffiti documentarian.
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