Freshly Painted Wild Style Wall in Riverside Park, NYC, 1983, Martha Cooper. Image via Steven Kasher Gallery
Martha Cooper has spent over four decades documenting the streets of New York, including street art from its earliest days, from her work as a staff photographer at the New York Post, to her chance encounter with HE3 tagging in the Bronx. This encounter led to other well-known street artists – Dondi, Daze, Futura, Seen – where she photographed street art that sometimes lasted only hours. In 1980, Cooper accompanied Dondi to the New Lots train yards, where she photographed his well-known, full-car painting “Children of the Grave Part 3.”
Style Wars by NOC 167, Manhattan, 1981, Martha Cooper. Image via Steven Kasher Gallery
The exhibition features more than 30 photographs from the 1970s and 1980s, in black and white, from her books, New York State of Mind, Street Play, and Tokyo Tattoo. The exhibition also includes Cooper’s recent environmental portraits of contemporary street artists at work.
Martha Cooper will be on view to June 3, 2017 at Steven Kasher Gallery, 515 West 26th Street.