Martha Cooper

Martha Cooper is an American documentary photographer whose work records urban art and everyday life. After moving to New York in 1977, she worked for the New York Post and began photographing graffiti and breaking as hip-hop culture developed in the Bronx.

With Henry Chalfant, she made Subway Art (1984), documenting painted subway trains and the artists behind them. Her photographs have circulated through exhibitions, books and magazines, preserving visual evidence of practices that were often temporary and vulnerable to removal.