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I remember we was there one day
and the guy was like in the jacket like this,
we are hanging out and they say "look this!"
"What the fuck! What is this?"
“Yeah, it's a book.“
and then we come to our mother,
and we make her translate the whole thing.
- We drive them crazy. - Oh, yeah!
Every day, we say “please can you... what say here?"
- And twice! - "Come again, but what...“
like... very boring guys.
When we get this, our life change.
We say “wow. I wanna do this. I wanna paint this.“
and then we're thinking like,
"who is the person who take all these photos?"
While Henry chalfant covered the cars
directly from the platform,
photographer Martha Cooper was capturing
the pieces within their urban landscape.
I began to cover
various aspects of the graffiti scene and it was fascinating.
What do you think about graffiti?
I don't like it, I don't think anybody does.
So I was 14, I saw this book and it was called subway art
and it was the first thing I ever stole in my life.
Well, some of it's art, some of it isn't.
What are your feelings about graffiti?
It's as much her story, as it is the story
of the individuals that painted those trains.
Unintentionally, her work...
Generations of new artists.
Changed visual culture.
All over the world.
How does she have this passion that continues?
She's with us, you know, like, from the beginning.
Marty was there because she was fascinated
with the creativity that's part of people's daily lives.
This book literally became my Bible.
They look at her and they say, "ah!
“There's someone who knows what I'm doing, and why."
Look! It's history! She got it here. All of this.
And that's our history, you know?
Our photographs have become a permanent record of something
that 20 years from now or 50 years from now
or even 100 years from now
is gonna be really rare and unusual
Well, it's something which is gone,
all the pieces in the book are gone.
Oh, how about these? This is a good collection!
How about this? Look at this and this!
Like, these are all negatives.
These are... this is slides
and, like, information relating to the slides.
These are all collections.
And I tend to think in collections.
We should really close this... and this.
Like - 'graffiti unsorted' and what does that mean?
Well, that means these are still in their slide boxes.
I'm not comfortable with the idea
that I'm a legend or an icon.
One of these has got to work.
And people keep using those words
and they make me feel really uncomfortable.
It wasn't the direction that I was after.
Come on, smile!
In fact, what I wanted to happen, really didn't happen.
And finally tonight,
we get a different kind of look
at how kids in the city have fun.
Through the eyes of a photographer
who loves to watch them.
Can we come?
Yes?
J" doorman, let me in the door I
I spent all my money, you ain't getting no more wages r
r sure, sir? Sir, are you sure? 1“
I in short, I'm not a mop you can drag 'cross the floor 1“
r inside, shell shock she's standing with a guy I
1“ guys your mans stare him out j"
rreal polite, "no, please, no, thanks" I
I "want a drink?" "I'm alright" j"
r beer goggles on pull the wool, now I'm blind j"
j' clear as day, I can see j"
I you make me melt - sun, ice cream j"
j" you smooth like felt, soft to the touch j"
I you wear repellant, smell your scent from up above I
I angel getting carried out... I
I thought that... yes, and everybody started running
and I thought we were supposed to... and I..
I was just so confused I didn't know,
I thought maybe there were cops
in the station or something and I'm running.
Think of those poor people that are standing there,
they don't know, they think they're...
You know, there's some sort of terrorist attack or something.
Like, ten people run in and start spraying on the walls.
I concentrated on that somebody was doing a big smiley face.
Talk about vandalism, this was like vandalism times ten!
Obviously... it's like...
We're not talking little smiley,
we're talking smiley that covered the entire wall.
I very badly wanted to be a photographer.
I was willing to do whatever it took,
and it turned out it took a lot.
Most collectors of photographica
don't collect these little film wallets,
but I just love the graphics.
Look at this one.
Women have always been photographers.
Look at the huge camera... She really knows how to use it.
Kodak marketed cameras to women from the 18005,
but for some reason it got to be, sort of, a man's job.
So right then, it was really hard
for a women to break into, like, magazine photography.
It was the heyday of
black-and-white photojournalism.
I didn't have any clue
about how you would have a career as a photographer.
I really just wanted to go take pictures in foreign places.
Luckily for me,
president Kennedy started the peace corps.
The corps will be a pool of trained men and women
sent overseas by the United States government,
to help foreign countries
meet their urgent needs for skilled manpower.
It's our hope to have between 500...
And I used to mail back the film to my father.
She wrote me and said
she wanted to get a motorcycle
and she wanted to travel from Thailand to england.
The Vietnam war was going on,
any of the guys had to go home and register right away,
but as a girl, you know, there wasn't any expectation.
56 years worth of travel.
Whoa! Now there's a passport!
I remember reading in the newspaper
about a national geographic internship.
National geographic! A photographer's dream job.
The image is just as romantic today as it ever was.
I immediately thought, wow I want that!
I used my pictures from the peace corps and I got accepted
and spent the summer as an intern at national geographic
they had never had a girl...
A woman, a girl. Whatever.
So that was a real foot in the door.
We went in different directions as we got older,
because I did have a child, she got married.
Maybe if we had put it together
we would have had a marriage with a child but we didn't.
We each did half of what one's supposed to do in life.
My husband was an anthropologist,
he did his field work in Japan.
My ultimate goal was to work for national geographic.
I saw a guy completely tattooed.
I had never seen this kind of tattooing.
To me it seemed like this would make
an excellent story for an American magazine.
I was writing proposals like crazy.
I thought this would be my foot in the door.
And they didn't use the story.
Sometimes you think you have a great idea,
and it just doesn't fly.
We came back, he got a job
at the university of Rhode Island.
To being a national geographic photographer
was to work for a newspaper.
I managed to work for
the narragansett times and the standard times,
these were weekly newspapers in Rhode Island.
I was making a big effort
to be what I called a 'real photographer'
and a real photographer to me
meant self-supporting.
Gloria steinem started Ms. Magazine.
I read an article written by a woman
who followed her academic husband around.
And I recognised myself
and I realised I didn't really want to be in Rhode Island.
I wanted to be in New York City where all the publishing was.
I'm like, "this is too small-town for me."
The narragansett times? I wanted the New York times.
I want to be in New York.
I tried the times, I tried the daily news... apn, upi.
She came in, you know, like a light.
Tiny, tiny. I think she had coveralls on, and scurrying.
You know she was always scurrying.
And she sat down and I thought,
"oh my god, if this woman can shoot,
"you know, wouldn't I love to work with her?"
Oh, my god. Did we ever look like that!
We did.
That's amazing.
They needed to beef up their female staff
and I came along at a good time.
I was the first female staff photographer
at the New York post.
The newsroom was amazing.
Junky, dirty, celebrity, crime, all that tawdry stuff.
You showed up, you took pictures
and you were onto the next assignment.
You needed to get that shot. The perp walk.
Yeah, I know, they're all going like this!
Studio 54 the whole thing
was that you're supposed to go there
and find the celebrities night after night after night.
Bill Cunningham. Excellent facial recognition.
Turns out that it's, like, a genetic thing.
- That you don't have! - Yes! That I don't have!
There were runners practicing for the next Olympics.
My assignment was look for cleavage.
That's all they wanted.
So, you know, these women were running around the track.
- Oh, my god! - Yeah!
And all I'm looking for is which one...
-Which ones tits were hanging out?
Yes! You don't remember?
Oh, they had no, I mean, no ethics!
Nothing. No ethics, no ethics.
We didn't know where we were or what we were doing,
we just knew we had a job to do.
And I think both of us tried to do that job the best we could.
Susan always wanted feature photos.
She called them weather shots.
Just filler pictures.
That would be a slow news day -
no accidents, no fires, nobody's dead,
nothing you could scare up.
It's like a blank canvas.
But she was very good at it
because she loved people so much.
I just sort of fell in love with New York.
There was always something to photograph.
We were sent on assignments in all five boroughs,
so I was free to be anywhere.
We set up a camera on a roof
opposite a wounded car on a New York City street
and watched what happened over a period of 14 hours
The '705 were a very tough time in New York.
As neighbours casually look on,
a group of kids try to break into a telephone company truck.
The Bronx, especially, was literally burning.
Highest crime, greatest unemployment
and the world's record for arson.
Gerald Ford would not give money
to prevent the city from going bankrupt.
Landlords decided it was cheaper
to set their buildings on fire
than try to collect the low rent.
We see the disregard
towards the urban centres of this country
as a national disgrace.
You wouldn't let your dog live here!
That's the city into which
Marty Cooper walked with her camera.
I used to drive through alphabet city,
avenues a, b, c and d, just looking for feature photos.
New York had a reputation of being dangerous and bombed out
but it was actually a great place to explore.
She'd bring that work in
and it was so lively, everything moving.
Like that picture of that little kid
who was bent over the...
You know just that body language,
that little tiny body.
She loved that innocence of childhood.
Kids were very creative.
Trying to build something for themselves
out of the nothing they found themselves surrounded by.
It was that poverty that gave
this city a soul and a character.
Even now in my head and in my skin,
I think about those pictures and I know how powerful they are
and how they are my story,
and the story of many young people,
and of this city, of what this city endured.
I saw this boy with an airplane that he had made,
and it was in pieces and connected by a single nail,
and he was throwing it on the ground
and the airplane would fall apart
and he'd pick it up and put it back together with this nail
and I'm like "yeah! That's it!"
They could do all kinds of creative things
with minimal materials,
and that's really what interested me the most,
that they didn't need complicated playgrounds
or expensive toys to enjoy themselves.
Kids were playing hopscotch, play stickball, stoop ball,
ringolevio, hot peas and butter,
all these games that we used to play. Skilzies.
Making go karts, painting their tags on the wall
The artefact of the toy caught my eye
as much as what the kids were doing with it.
This was my brother's camera,
when he was, like, three or something,
and he was very clever with it.
And... it has a slate that you could draw,
and he actually used it...
So he would pretend to take a picture
And maybe he would pre-draw something on the slate,
and then he would pull out the slate
and it would have a little drawing on it.
This is the eraser for the slate, super creative.
That moment in time
gave birth to a tremendous number of things
which Marty Cooper's camera and her genius captured.
It's not something you could do in a week or a month,
but you could do in a year if you have your camera every day,
and the kids got to know me.
Pigeons? You know,
like who thinks about pigeons in New York?
Nobody! But Coop did!
You know, climb, climb, climb, climb, way up on the roof
and learn about how it was done and who kept pigeons and why.
She would get to the heart of something.
One of those boys showed me
his little notebook with graffiti drawings
and explained that he was practicing
to paint his name on a wall.
And that was the first time that I understood what graffiti was.
And when I expressed interest
he said "well, I can introduce you to a king."
We drove up there, went down into this basement.
And then these kids.
I didn't know what those kids were.
The had the talent that they had.
The king turned out to be dondi,
who was considered to be
one of the greatest of all the graffiti kings.
He recognised my name from a photo
of a wall that he had painted his tag on.
He was, I can tell you, very articulate.
He described these big pieces to me.
Amazing beautiful artwork,
tiny drawings of these trains.
Oh, they were beautiful, these books.
I was just astounded,
first of all, I didn't know that they even drew
before they went to the yards.
And then the thought of her going
into the yards at night with those guys.
I spent about eight hours one night,
watching him do a piece.
A top-to-bottom whole car.
It was fascinating.
So I started going up to the Bronx
looking for locations where I could see the trains.
I'd never seen any of these, I'd never noticed any of these.
I had never really looked at the trains.
I got obsessed with graffiti.
I hadn't understood at first
that kids were writing their names.
It wasn't like political graffiti
that was anti something or pro something,
it was just a name.
Then I began to recognise names,
dez or daze or doze
and it becomes a game and I got into the game.
Once I good picture of an interesting train,
then I didn't want the same background.
Did I wonder why I was doing it?
No, I did not wonder why I was doing it,
I was just like, "where's the next train?"
Picture New York subways,
most people see grime and graffiti, letters and symbols
and colours, covering the walls, and assaulting the senses.
We called it writing, we didn't really called it graffiti.
That was a term that was really used
by like the mainstream media
to describe 'vandalism'.
We started writing our names and our street number.
It was kind of like this fraternal order
where we communicated through, like, signs.
It wasn't just about writing a name,
but it was like who was writing the name the best style
and how can we learn from them, where are they?
And they started tagging from the parks
into the subway stations, onto the trains.
Many of us were also running away from problems at home.
Extracurricular activities
was being budgeted out.
And hell, they didn't give me nowhere else
to paint, so I got to make a place.
And I had to dodge a lot of gangs.
I decided like, "nah, I'm not rolling with these cats.“
so for me it was more fun touring around
with the rats in the tunnels and...
And... outdo each other with colour and style.
I started writing around '74, '75, started tagging.
I started when I was 15.
And I say that because there's people
that was writing when they was 12.
I was ten years old.
We had a subculture,
we had a way of communicating through these train lines.
So, here we are. At esplanade.
- Wow. - Ok. Well, how do we get in?
We're gonna have to, I guess, pay our fare
unless you want to jump the turnstile for old time's sake.
You know you could have seen like a blade
whole car there back in the day.
So we just, jump down and walk down?
- Yeah, that's what we did. - We could. Yeah. Ok. Let's see.
I mean, I'm game for whatever.
So if you film down there and you see,
like, in between the tracks, these 'Bridges' as we call them.
And you have like a much higher vantage point
to paint the train on the top half.
This was a beautiful spot,
you could really wreck, like, you know,
with both sides, like,
a couple of hundred train sides in one night.
Cool.
We didn't know anyone outside who was taking photographs
until we met Henry and Marty.
Henry chalfant's
telephone answering machine messages
are far from the expected.
Yo, Henry, this is last,
I busted out a rooftop on the 6 line.
I had heard about him from other graffiti writers
and I wanted to meet this person
who was also photographing trains.
The graffiti writer leaves Henry clues
about a fresh masterpiece
spray-painted across a subway car.
Henry goes after the shot.
There was definitely a competitive aspect to it,
she was not calling me up every day
and saying "Henry there's something
I think you need to get,"
because she was wanting it for herself, and I was the same way.
The way I did it was a series,
turns out very good for looking at the art.
He was very interested in the art,
and I was more interested in the culture.
When Marty and Henry started documenting us,
we got to look at ourselves very differently.
As subjects of interest.
For us it was like, "wow, we're surprised
"that this white lady and this white dude are interested."
We kind of let them in because
they were truly interested in our lives.
We gotta be clear now, people had cameras.
My instamatic. Little 110.
But when we found out
that there were other people
taking good, high-quality shots, you know it was nice to know.
Where you do write mostly?
-Mostly?
In the lay ups, where they keep the trains on the weekend.
And how do you get in to, uh, do that?
With a key. Sometimes the doors are open.
Just go inside a whole bunch of us, all the writers,
we just, you know, start marking up all over,
inside, outside, every place.
They were there for some serious moments, you know.
Like that one shot with dondi, my god.
I like still cry when I think about that.
That's the most beautiful shot
of a boy in his fuckin' yard, you know?
This was gonna be my ticket
to good assignments with magazines.
"September 28th, 1980. Sunday.
"Have just been put through the ringer
by the New York times magazine
"in an on-again, off-again series of promises
to publish my graffiti photos.
"This had me as high as a kite
imagining my first major colour spread,
"something I desperately need for a portfolio,
"and then down in the depths and in tears
"when I realised I couldn't let them turn gorgeous colour,
“necessary to the story,
into undistinguished black and white."
This is just ridiculous!
Most people thought that graffiti was pure vandalism
and not worth my time.
But I believed in it.
Young people, that were so into their art
that they would risk their lives to do it.
I decided to leave the post
because I wanted to pursue graffiti.
She's like "I got to, I gotta do that.
“I don't care what you think! I gotta do it!"
There's the famous dondi picture.
Henry and I both wanted to have a book published,
we decided to combine forces and do it together.
We worked all spring and summer on that book.
And, one after another
we went to these publishers, and... no, no, no, no, no.
In New York? Forget about it, we tried.
"Don't even want to discuss."
Get caught splashing your
technicolour trash in our subways
and I'll send you to rikers island
until your spray cans dry up!
"Total waste of time, energy and money.
"All you're doing is encouraging this."
Because the trains are so visible,
it was an easy-to-latch-onto symbol of urban blight.
The acid solution is sprayed on subway cars
in this exotic urban car wash.
Razor-lined barricades of steel
have sprung up around the train yards.
I hate graffiti.
Newspapers and the mayor
believed that by crushing graffiti
they were doing something to lessen crime.
Third time? Couple of days in jail.
There wasn't really a ready audience for the book.
At least not in the United States.
We took it to Germany, to the Frankfurt book fair.
In Europe, I guess people weren't as tired of graffiti.
The first booth we got to,
they immediately said, yes, they liked it.
The rest is history.
3000 copies.
I think we felt that was small
but it was ok because we had a book.
It was a long, hard road to get that book published,
and I was very happy to have something
in my hands that I could show people.
Now we're gonna have some major stories
in magazines with these pictures.
I had gotten the museum shop
interested in doing Christmas cards.
The chairman of the board of directors
said, "people like that need to be lined up at dawn and shot."
That was the end of that idea.
Just they hated graffiti so much,
they couldn't see through
to the fact that it might be worthy of study.
They spend the day scrubbing a d-train...
Kids stole it and because of that,
bookstores locked it up or put it in a glass case
or didn't want to carry it
because it just kept disappearing
but people weren't buying it.
Subway art tanked. It did not do well at all.
Then I'm like, "I gotta move on."
That was really responsible
for my figuring "I cannot do this anymore."
You gonna think twice before you do it again?
Sure enough I'm-a think twice before I do it again.
That was it. "I'm out."
After 1989, the subway, the mta made a policy
that if a train gets hit, they'll pull it out of service
so that no writer will ever have the motivation
of seeing their name run.
I would have never imagined that I would have stopped writing,
like, at the time I thought I was gonna write forever,
I thought the pieces was gonna run forever, you know.
Very clean.
- Yep. - See, not one little tag.
You know, if you look at this train now
you would never suspect
that a graffiti culture had ever existed.
No. Super clean.
You have to realise when something has run its course
and be satisfied with what you did, and I'm there.
So I'd just rather tell the stories of when it was fun
than try to recreate something now that's gone forever.
There, there,
I mean every time I come down there's less and less.
But that you can definitely line up, here.
See this little squiggle right there?
Wildstyle! Wildstyle!
Right here.
Who could possibly have imagined?
I want them to put a plaque here.
This was the wildstyle wall.
Years of effort, I quit the job at the post,
I had really gambled so it was... yeah, it was stressful.
Not having any pay-off to speak of.
There was, I think maybe a year
when I just moved into my studio.
I just put a mat on the floor.
I definitely never wanted to depend on my husband
to support me, and I didn't.
There was some extremely strong women in my family,
and I was raised to be... Like them.
You know I love New York.
But it's definitely not a city for everybody,
and it wasn't a city for my ex-husband.
You know, the path Coop followed
was not an easy path.
Marriage didn't work out, she never wanted children.
You know, this is against most of society's rules.
Woman, children, wife, mother,
grandmother, you know right down there.
And she was like "none of that for me!"
I don't really remember
crying myself to sleep at night or anything.
And in fact I like being alone.
It's very comfortable being alone.
I'm not a depressed kind of person.
My friends sustain me.
-Would you like to see my pokédex?
-Would I?
We went into the Paris catacombs,
and we went down around midnight,
through a manhole, went through a manhole.
We didn't come out until 5:00 in the morning!
Here, we go rappelling down this rock face.
And here we are enjoying ourselves
and here we are also enjoying ourselves.
- Who was that guy? - Um... Cesar.
Cesar. Ok, so that was cozumel.
You know you get old but you can imagine
yourself 50 years younger!
You know, it doesn't hurt to... Ok, it doesn't hurt to remember.
These filing cabinets contain a lot of Marty's pictures.
A folder on bocce.
A folder on the guardian angels, the hindu temple in queens.
A Haitian dollmaker.
Interiors of wasps -
white anglo-Saxon protestant living rooms.
An erotic baker.
Who made breads in pornographic shapes.
City lore has been documenting the city
with Marty since we started in 1986.
I really connected with these people
and they needed photographers.
So it was perfect.
Here's the photograph of the breakdancer on cardboard.
And Marty just made our work sing.
She was very drawn to folklorists
because they were trying to study
these local traditions and these artforms
that nobody else was interested in.
We're doing a project on casitas.
Little puerto rican-style houses built on vacant lots
and used as social clubs.
Somebody writing a history of New York
is not going to cover those.
But they're very much part of the lived experience
of being puerto rican in the city
or being latino in the city.
From a lot of different vantage points,
she's capturing this
so you can see this incredible landscape.
And then you see this little casita and garden patch.
She's photographing the corners of life,
which are often forgotten about.
Having that record of how people lived is important.
That's the only way we have of transcending time.
And the only thing they will have to go back to
is the record that Marty left.
Here back up, back up... Back up...
Oh it's says 'original'.
Interesting, I was looking all over for that.
Many of the things that she's done,
nobody paid her to take photographs,
she's just out there, she's just doing it,
she's doing it all the time.
You know, I don't have a family.
So I can do absolutely everything I want, for me.
I have all... Every hour of every day,
I can devote to my own work.
Might be that one.
Honestly, I can't remember.
There's a big stack of contact sheets in here. Look at this.
Slides, graffiti. Miscellaneous walls.
That would be graffiti.
I mean when I look at them,
it kind of makes me a little depressed.
What am I doing with them? Nothing.
You know, they're sitting in my vast archives.
But you know before we put it in there,
can we just have a peek inside and see if there's something,
because the reason I started this...
But to me, organising the archive
feels like going backwards.
I want to go forwards.
It seems like I have the skills necessary
to do most assignment work,
but not those necessary
for convincing editors to give me the job.
There were times when,
oh, I just wanted assignments to go to her,
but she's you know, she's fit for a certain thing.
Back in Washington
at national geographic headquarters,
illustrations editor Susan welchman
is not thrilled with the pictures she's getting.
They hired me as photo editor. I went to Washington.
They offered me the job, I took it.
At any one time
they've got about 170 stories underway
in various stages of development.
Then a story came up on,
you know something that was suited to her
so she was assigned to that.
Susan gave me a real assignment.
The story was pollen.
Something I wasn't interested in then,
and I'm not interested in now.
I read that in Japan there was a place
where they had to hand-pollenate
fruit trees because the bees had died out.
Geographic would send you wherever
it took to get that picture.
There was no budget on time or money,
a lot of photographers cannot handle that.
Susan was trying to help me,
you know we'd be editing this thing
and she's telling me
to try this and try that and try something else.
I really couldn't come up with those fabulous pictures.
She thought she wanted it
but it was because it was unattainable, I'd say.
They always said,
“we make pictures we don't take pictures, “
and I like taking pictures.
Wasn't a good fit for her.
I just like seeing something and shooting it.
And that is not how geographic works.
Ever at all.
When people say,
"which photographers influence you?"
I always say 'snapshots'.
I like the naiveness,
people are just trying to capture the moment
without thinking about unusual angles
or different lenses
or, um, I would say the presence
of the photographer is minimal,
it's all about subject matter.
And that's what I like.
When I looked at my old street play pictures
I felt that those were some of the best pictures
I had ever taken.
I missed doing that kind of photography
and I thought,
"I just want to go and take pictures
and see what I can find."
I used money that I inherited from my parents
to do a project that I wouldn't otherwise be able to do.
There are those smoke stacks. I'm holding my little camera.
My first camera.
My father and my uncle had a camera store in Baltimore.
My mother taught journalism.
It was a tribute to them.
I kinda wish they were alive,
I think they would have enjoyed seeing
the neighbourhood that I documented.
This was a dragon,
and the idea was that when the mailman came
and put mail in the box and raised the flag,
the head of the dragon was here,
and it revealed a little portrait of the house.
Baltimore, my home town, seemed like the perfect place
to do a street photography project.
And Sally drove me around looking for neighbourhoods.
I wanted to be part of the neighbourhood.
So we found a house that I could afford.
Why in the hell would you live in this community?
Most people would not move here,
because of the violence, because of the drugs.
So look, this is fresh because it says 'happy valentines day',
it's not left over from last year.
And there's a big rip taco up there
which wasn't there before.
Right behind the house over here a few months ago,
that was somebody's heroin stash.
These are from Baltimore,
many of them were in my backyard.
This one still has some interesting... something in it.
There are these kids standing on the street corner,
and they're calling out about the caps, the green caps
or the blue caps or whatever,
I actually don't know the difference.
Isn't that the cutest little jar you've ever seen?
I had a feeling this neighbourhood
was going to gentrify,
and I thought I would like to see
if I can document that process.
I wanted to see whether there was
some way I could see a change
in the neighbourhood.
Are people going to be forced to move?
And if so, what happens?
You know, I had no idea exactly
how I was going to document that,
but that was part of the idea.
I mean, there's stuff bad around here
going on right now,
but it's not as bad as it was.
How fast it went down,
versus how fast it's going back up, it's like...
This is a neighbourhood where you have
a lot of disenfranchised people.
Even to take somebody's photograph,
and them to be ok with it is a big step.
Honestly, please don't film now,
put it down, until we talk to somebody.
Hi! How you doing?
We're just taking some pictures...
Remember when I used to take a lot of pictures?
Yeah, so is it ok for him to take some? No problem? Ok.
That's cocky! She still lives there.
Is she still in the house now?
Hi! Remember me?
- Been a long time! - A long time, I know.
What she did was to make small copies,
you know, 4x6 prints...
- I took some of them. - That one!
Yeah, this one!
-This one.
And she would have a little notebook
and she'd write down their address...
You've got a lot!
And bring them back.
Like a photo gallery!
If she came back two weeks later
or a month later, either knock on the door
or stick them in the little mailbox
or slide them under the door.
- What's her name? - Giniya.
- Didn't we call her something? - Lady.
- Lady! - Lady. Yeah, lady.
I think it's kind of a cheap shot
to go around taking pictures of the boarded-up buildings
and the trash on the street, and I never focused on that.
- Great, perfect. - That's awesome.
Excuse me, when it gets, like, dark-dark, for night-time,
we are going to set off big fireworks.
- Right here? - Up there!
Up there? There's going to be some big fireworks?
Yeah, that shoots up in the sky!
We'll come back! We'll come back.
- Yay! Thank you! - Thank you!
I'm not looking for things that are... beautiful
but I'm just looking for people that
are making the best of what they have.
- I like your chairs here. - Thank you
one for each of you.
- I'm doing the splits! - Ok! You ready!
One two three, yes and...!
People would start to recognise her
and call her the camera lady.
- The camera lady! - Yeah.
-The camera lady's here!
-You're here every year taking pictures!
Yeah, yeah. I've been here a lot taking pictures.
- I remember you. - Yep.
And they accepted her.
I've been good!
Look at this! Who's in there? Who's in that picture?
- Tata! - Tata? Ok!
Did the horses come back?
Did the horses come back to the stable?
- Yeah. - Yeah? Can we go in?
Go in there if you want.
To be able to see something that
is beautiful amongst brokenness
I think takes a very keen eye.
Always my pictures are people rising above their environment.
In one way or another.
I hope you had a good time,
I hope we showed you a good time!
- Yeah, we're having a good time. - That's great.
The Baltimore neighbourhood sowebo -
south west Baltimore -
was named after soweto.
It's no use to take a lot of pictures about something
if you aren't going to put them somewhere where other people
are going to be able to see them.
-The strongest would be this one.
-Well, what about that one?
That one's just not a great picture.
- Well, ok. - It's just not.
You know what? There's part of me that still feels like
I have not been accepted
into the photographic community in New York.
In a way she's undiscovered in our world,
you know in our world of the photo art gallery.
So, I gotta tell you,
we are gonna be avoiding cute children, to some extent.
-I mean, there will be a few of them.
Alright.
We're also going to be avoiding,
believe it or not, smiling people.
-Although there will be exceptions.
This probably would be one of them.
- And why? - Yeah, why?
Because...
Somebody else did a piece on smiling people?
People don't take those pictures as seriously,
and they don't react to them the same way.
They just...
It's that simple.
I mean, when you see a smiling face
you're in a different realm, you're not in the art realm.
If you look across the history of art you are not
going to see that many smiles
compared to much more serious faces.
- It's true. - You're just not.
If I have a picture with a smiling child
I really want in,
I will make a case for it.
You should make a case for it, absolutely.
So you know, you can see the theme evolving or starting.
People taking over a ruin and making it into...
- An appropriation of space... - An appropriation of space.
Is exactly what graffiti is, so...
Exactly, so...
It's really about how people
are making New York City their own.
Right, right.
It's New York,
people are more interested in it than other places,
because New York is sort of the capital of the world.
At least that's what new yorkers think.
A lot of people do!
Marty has her own unique perspective on things,
and it wasn't always easy for her
to get the attention she deserved.
Her acclaim was slow in coming.
Akim walta from Germany
contacted me and he wanted to look at my hip hop pictures.
There was no clear book idea,
I just wanted to present the New York hip hop culture.
She said "ok, here's my archive. Have a look."
Wow. The volume of material. You could not imagine.
Maybe a little bit too much.
I wouldn't have been there if it hadn't been for the post.
They sent me to upper Manhattan
to shoot what was supposed to be riot.
They confiscated spray cans and markers,
and a knife and a gun
and when I asked the cops what they had been doing,
they said well they had been...
I called into the post and I said,
"send a reporter! This is amazing!
"They were dancing! They were spinning on their heads!"
There was no riot, so no article. They didn't like it.
I was fascinated by the idea that boys were dancing.
She was there. Like a normal fixture to our lives.
A lot of people would come in, and, you know,
like, "let me take some pictures
of the kids dancing," and they're out
but she was there.
It was not breaking, it was called 'rocking'.
It became incorporated into this bundle
of activities that became known as hip hop.
Music, dance and art.
Sao bento was a subway station,
that all the b-boys and graffiti writers,
rappers, DJs, hang out at that time.
I remember a guy come there says
"you guys still do these things?
"Because in us, this stop, it's finished,
there are no b-boys anymore."
The '805 in Germany were like break-dancers everywhere.
The b-boy scene and graffiti scene was still growing.
The culture was kept and developed.
Same situation in France, Tokyo, in other parts of the world.
It gave young people a voice
and a method to evolve their skills.
To put up your tag, even if it's ugly,
with effort or braveness, you can become a hero.
That book turned into the hip hop files.
That came out in 2004, it was published in Germany.
He took me on a book tour. Crazy, crazy book tour.
These pictures sat in my files for 20 years
so to find out they are not only interesting to me
but interesting to people in Germany
and elsewhere is thrilling actually.
I knew it because I travelled the world
and I knew all the graffiti writers
were influenced by subway art.
Everybody seemed to know who I was.
This is Martha Cooper!
Everybody, come on! Martha! Cooper!
I think that might have been the first time
I heard that people referred to subway art as their Bible.
Well, I'll tell you an incident that blew my mind,
I am so sorry I didn't take a picture.
We went to Brazil, and we were going to a show
that the osgemeos twins had done
where they had done the whole floor,
they had done the walls, the ceilings,
and there was some band that was gonna play.
And we were standing in line,
and these young people
that were interested in graffiti came along
and somebody said, "this is Martha Cooper."
And the kid got down flat on the ground
and bowed before her,
totally prostrate, to his idol!
To his idol. Martha was his idol.
They were, "thank you so much, you changed my life,"
that was the first time I really understood the effect.
Uh-huh!
All our friends from Europe,
they say "yeah, ok, yeah, of course, subway art."
They influence with this book, the whole world.
For her it's like, already, like far away.
Graffiti unsorted, more graffiti unsorted.
I don't think we would be here doing this even now
if it wasn't for some of the publications
that came out of the photos they took.
It took it from a national to a global phenomena.
When you talk to people about
how they got into graffiti before the Internet,
they all say, "through subway art."
-Everybody has a copy of subway art!
-It's the Bible, no?
This is the Bible, this one here.
Subway art ruined my life.
Subway art just spread across the world,
and so you know, so she's an icon!
I was amazed at...
I didn't realise the impact that the book had had.
Long before the Internet.
Because the sales were really very modest at first.
They didn't have the actual book.
It was really hard to get it at that time, really difficult.
Very difficult to get the real book.
You have this, you never leave this with anybody.
This book had to be passed around by hand,
through a photocopy version.
A photocopy. Black and white.
And they made photocopies of those and gave those copies...
Get a pen, and we write down all the colours in the book.
What they liked about subway art
was that it captured these trains that before that,
maybe they got a glimpse of one on some television show.
Subway art provided the template
for them to carefully study the styles.
Really, like... With them linked,
like two crazy guys like this.
-The whole day, to learn it.
-Spending like, days and days like this.
Imagine how many influence, how many life they change.
This is crazy. How many kids all over the world?
It's just something that you couldn't have predicted.
And, in a way, that makes it even better.
People have come up to me during this trip and said
"you've changed my life,"
and all I can say to them is, "well, you've changed my life."
And it's true.
Basically, all of this has given my life meaning.
This is a Shepard fairey piece
that he made from one of my street play photos.
He Shepard-ised it.
I would say that there was always
something going on with street art
but I was completely out of it.
This is another nazza
from the photo of a little boy with a hydrant.
It's a huge art movement.
Some people say it's the biggest art movement
in the history of the world.
It's definitely connected to the graffiti scene.
A little photograph of me with that first camera.
I'm like, "you know what?
If this is happening I'm gonna be part of it."
I made a decision to jump back in.
I tick, boom I
I mi nah really care weh mi bump into I
I bulldozer make room I
I write that pon fi mi tomb I
I don't care if they assume I
I only stop to collect, then I resume I
I you sleep, I goon I
I yuh nah waan test who's badder than who I
I tick, boom. I
I think I probably thought, "if it doesn't work out,
I'll jump out again."
My first thought was "where is that drawing?"
And then my second thought was,
"I think I better put in a protective plastic sleeve!“
dondi gave me this drawing
because I gave him a picture of the train.
It says, "I just wanted to touch base
and increase my offer on the dondi drawing
"to... based on 2018 market value
growth for his work."
If dondi's work is now really valuable
and I knew that one of his paintings
has sold for $240,000,
which is an incredible amount,
then I felt that this drawing should be in a museum.
I just decided I'd rather hold onto the drawing,
I like that... and I just... And dondi gave this to me!
This was a present, so... That was my decision.
Internet, Instagram, social media
have completely changed the street art situation.
What is up?
Right now we are in wynwood art district,
in Miami beach, Florida.
It's art Basel the big international art fair
so of course the art district is popping.
In 2005-2006, we came to wynwood,
an industrial neighbourhood.
Crime-ridden, and dilapidated.
But there was this undercurrent of a lot of graffiti.
What we chose to do is just take it to a whole 'nother level
and create the wynwood walls.
I came out to show my art from new Mexico, I love wynwood.
It's also confusing
because I'd like to see more artists everywhere
and less $500 sunglasses.
19705, 19805,
this one of the first street artists to come about.
It would take 30 minutes, just...
Because it was illegal so they had to hurry.
- What's his name? - Crash, he's from New York City
we call it gentle-fication, as opposed to gentrification
but things will change,
that's the natural evolution of things.
Martha has been involved with all this
for 40 years or more.
She used to be just about the only one.
It's really a different world now.
There's Martha with all her experience and skill.
Julia! This camera is frickin awesome!
Now there's often a crowd of 100-200 people,
all with their camera phones.
Hi. Could I get you to take a photo?
Who wants to be in the photo?
What is remarkable about Martha is she keeps going.
Ok. Are we missing anyone?
I'm just interested in seeing what happens.
Good, bad or indifferent.
I'm going to try to somehow capture
what's happening with it.
Who made that t-shirt?
So, not only is this...
I guess I kind of stick out because I have white hair
but still, if I'm in any kind of a situation
with a bunch of photographers,
they don't take me seriously, and that really hurts.
I'll fight for my position.
Ok, that looks good!
I'm standing like this, and some guy will just come,
and he'll just stand right in front of me.
One more everybody.
You don't have to do anything crazy.
As if I didn't exist.
They couldn't believe that I could
possibly be a serious photographer.
I think this is gonna block it!
Ha! Fuck!
You see him slow down for me? He slowed down for me.
- Did he? Really? - Yeah, yeah.
I had the camera, "I'm sorry!" He said!
It's tricky with the light.
It changes each time you move too,
because of the... whether there's a tree behind.
Oh, he's gonna...
There's a fucking train coming!
So I'm running, running, and then he comes just with me see?
Oh, that's so cool. He got great shots.
Yeah, but I still didn't get the...
No but you got the train!
Wide angle.
Yeah you don't need me anymore.
- Huh? - Nobody needs me anymore.
Oh, yes, of course!
Only for Martha we pose.
She knows we hate that shit.
Oh, I just missed it! Fuck!
I'm gonna go down there.
Who's got the camera?
Well, take it!
I understand now why celebrities were always ducking cameras
and not wanting to sign autographs and things.
They would just like to be left alone to eat their lunch...
I want to take a picture with you,
before I leave, before I go home.
Ok, take it quickly.
Without having their picture taken.
We are all graffiti artists!
It's wildstyle, baby!
I've had people on the subway recognise me!
I've walked down the street,
it's very odd, you know "Martha Cooper!"
Marty Cooper in the house! She's just flown in.
I feel like the photography part
isn't understood as well as it could be.
Can I please have you sign my book as well?
Ok, you have to understand they're already pre-signed,
- but I can add something. - I'm such a big fan.
And I try to be nice.
But it does make me feel uncomfortable.
I've been following you for quite a while.
You're amazing!
You're like my grandmother!
Lets make it 'mother'!
- You're like my mother, then. - There you go.
I love it.
L-e-o-n? I already signed it here.
What are we doing here?
To the boys at le fix city tattoo.
- Where is fix city tattoo? - Copenhagen.
Oh! Copenhagen! Ok.
Thank you!
Do you...
Do you guys know the book that I did about tattooing?
I'm only a celebrity in one particular field.
And if you take one step out of that field and I'm nobody.
- Denmark? - Yes.
Ok! Tokyo tattoo 1970,
it's all pictures I shot in Japan, check it out!
- It's about tattooing! - Thank you.
Before the graffiti, I was interested in tattooing!
You gotta check it out.
And I just don't want to get caught
with, like, 100 other things to sign.
Bye-bye!
This is the next one.
You're like my grandmother!
You know I don't have to tell you, if you sign one tonight,
other people will see it and then they'll stand in line.
One more. One more.
I've signed all of these.
Thank you very much.
- That way? Ok. - This way.
It would have been enough for her
to just photograph the graffiti
that she saw on trains right?
For a lot of people that's enough.
But that was not enough for her.
I love illegal graffiti.
Being on the inside, being invited...
Ok, that's fine with me.
Ok, thank you.
Yeah.
It does look fresh.
Cheers!
Oh, that's kinda cute.
I hope it's in focus.
I think what we did tonight
is exactly the kind of risk that I'm willing to take.
So I really thank you for not only
did you take me, but you didn't, like...
Act as if I was an old lady.
- You just took me in you know. - Come on, I was scared.
When you do something like that,
you understand the attraction of the whole culture.
Because that kind of thrill is like a drug or something.
You know?
It was perfect. It was perfect.
It was. It was great.
And thank you! I mean, like... Do you have a grandmother?
Marty! Hello!
Look at you!
I want to take you into my studio
and show you some pictures! 'Cause...
- Of what happened last night? - Yes! Crazy action!
-Oooh.
Oh, Martha. Oh, my god.
Do you... do you see any...
Martha, do you see any sign of police?
Maybe they would fine me but
really are they gonna put me in jail for this?
- Of course they will. - You think?
Once I've put myself in the situation,
I'm not going to worry about whether it's dangerous.
- Wow. - Oh my god.
Now that I have the shots, it feels amazing and wonderful
and I'm so glad I did this.
But when you're in the middle of trying to shoot it
and trying to get the shots
it's not like I'm celebrating
the activity and congratulating myself
for being allowed to get into the yard and shoot.
I'm just trying to keep up and take... get the picture.
I'm not thinking about anything other than exposure,
you know, shutter speed, lighting and who's doing what.
I'm not feeling anything,
other than photography.
Martha could have gone into corporate photography
and photographed like, ad campaigns, or something
and met a bunch of models, it would have bored her to tears.
Think she likes travel, adventure,
and a little bit of danger.
That's, you know... it wasn't... Put it this way.
The people that she photographed were not choirboys.
Go slow, slow, slow, slow.
Let me look at... yes! Yes! Yes!
This is it! This is it! This is it!
- Oh, there's a spot. - Right here! Perfect! See?
- Look, folks! - The parking gods.
We gotta get a shot of that train going! Bare! Boring.
Hmm.
Trying to line it up.
Oh, shit! Hold this. Here.
Ok, now I see I need to move... Move! Move! Move! Move.
Ok, I see, it's gotta be above the train.
Alright, so I was back further.
Ok we have to wait for the next train.
Oh, there's one! That was convenient.
Ok. Good. Done! We got it!
Although let me see... I want to see the book again.
Look! Yo!
Dondi! Bro, that's that shit I was telling you.
Ok, but do you know who took the picture?
No I don't. Was it you?
Wow, bro, it was you?
I seen a picture of the lady that took it.
Bro, you gotta take a picture with me, bro. Me and her, bro.
You got a legend fucking picture.
You know, it's enormously satisfying
to be able to continue to having relationships
with the people that I photograph.
- That's incredible! I love it. - I never seen anyone do it
in a sense it's become my family.
And I'm part of this enormous, connected
street art graffiti world
and that's very satisfying.
Martha, she feel that time how it's powerful.
She feel that. She saw.
The same thing that I think she saw
when she saw kids playing
with whatever they find in the street.
She see the same thing in these guys painting subway.
There's no one like you.
We love you. We love you.
She change our life.
This idea to take photos of these guys
in the subways change our life.
Ok, see you.
Bye-bye.
Everyday life is only everyday
for a short period of time.
The subway pictures took 30, 40 years
to be of interest to people.
You know it might take that long for Baltimore.
Maybe the next big thing is gonna happen
in China, or Japan or Pakistan,
for all we know.
I'm sure that there will be somebody
there taking pictures of it.
I'm never going to be a Google doodle.
I don't think I'm going to make it to that level.
Not a...
Not a very high aspiration.
I don't care about my legacy, I'm gonna be dead.
Let somebody else worry about my legacy.
Subway art is out there, the books are out there,
I think they will survive.
I just keep at it. Keep going.
What's next?