Martha Cooper, legendary graffiti photographer

She brought graffiti culture to the world with her camera.  Now, over 35 years later, Martha Cooper is featured in a new documentary.

Transcript

00:00People were so angry about graffiti, and they felt personally attacked by graffiti.

00:06And they didn't understand because it was like a form of personal advertising.

00:18It's not as if I love every piece of graffiti that I see written on every wall,

00:24and I don't like it if I see it on a marble statue, for example, or a beautiful building.

00:30I would prefer that graffiti writers stick to writing their names on things that don't matter.

00:44I very badly wanted to be a photographer.

00:47I was willing to do whatever it took, and it turned out it took a lot.

00:51The early tags were simply just writing their nickname, with maybe a street number.

00:57And little by little, they got more and more complicated,

01:00until you see some of the amazing, wild-style graffiti today, where you can't even read the names.

01:07You could recognize the style even before you could read the name, and I found that fascinating.

01:22I was doing a personal project documenting kids on the Lower East Side who were doing creative things,

01:37and one boy explained to me that he was writing his nickname on the wall,

01:42and he showed me his notebook in which he was practicing to write on the wall.

01:47And that was like a lightbulb going off. I was like, oh, okay, now I get it. These are names.

02:00To me, that makes it even more interesting, that it's illegal.

02:05Some people have changed their mind, and people that understand it,

02:08but there are plenty of people that think that the word graffiti is synonymous with vandalism.

02:17It makes the city more interesting, as you're walking around, to see things that are written by hand on the wall,

02:31as opposed to seeing tons of advertising everywhere.

02:34I deplore the fact that there's so much advertising all over New York.

02:48Wouldn't it be amazing if all the trains were covered with names and paintings from kids?

03:01But I don't particularly want the city to say, okay, come and decorate our trains.

03:09Giving people permission to paint would make it into a completely different culture.

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