Martha Cooper
April 20 - June 3, 2017
Martha Cooper (b. 1942) grew up surrounded by cameras, her father and uncle were camera store owners. From an early age she accompanied her father on outings with the Baltimore Camera Club. She took her first photographs at age 3. In the decades since, Cooper’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide including Museum of the City of New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Pera Museum, Istanbul; Hellerau European Center for the Arts, Dresden; Urbannation, Berlin; Trafo Galerie, Prague; Pallazo Incontro, Rome; Stolen Space Gallery, London and Fullersta Gard, Stockholm. Her work was featured in the exhibition Bridges of Graffiti at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Numerous books of her work have been published including Subway Art (1984), Hip Hop Files (2004), We B* Girlz (2005), Street Play (2006), New York State of Mind (2007), Tag Town (2007), Going Postal (2009) and Tokyo Tattoo 1970 (2012). Her first book Subway Art (with Henry Chalfant), has been reprinted multiple times and is affectionately called the “bible” by graffiti artists. In the 33 years it has been in print has consistently outsold nearly every other art book on the market. In 2016, she was invited to speak at TEDxVienna, on the theme Out There.
