Martha Cooper, Tag Town; The Evolution of New York Graffiti Writing, Poster, Signed by Martha Cooper, BLADE, Snake 1, CoCo 144, Stay High 149, and many others, 2008. Poster Size: 17.5 x 18.5 inches
In the 1970s Martha Cooper was photographing children on the Lower East Side for the New York Post when she first discovered graffiti: “You would see a bunch of legible but unintelligible letters on the wall…I found out it was kids’ names.” That revelation began a 50-year obsession for Cooper who started meeting the artists, and devoting all her time to photographing graffiti and street art. Subway Art, her 1984 book collaboration with photographer Henry Chalfant, has gone through numerous editions, and is now credited with spreading graffiti around the world.
This was the first of many books featuring Cooper’s photos. Gallery 98 has recently acquired an exceptional poster promoting a more recent book Tag Town, which focuses on the original, stylized name tags from which graffiti as a movement first emerged. Appropriately, the Tag Town poster is embellished with over 20 original hand-penned tags collected by a fan at the time of the book’s launch. Among the tags are those of early graffiti legends Blade, Snake 1, Coco 144, Stay High 149, and others. The poster bears Martha Cooper’s signature.
Over the course of her career, Cooper has documented every form of graffiti: tags, full cars, stencils, wheat pasted posters, stickers and murals. Going Postal: Mailing Label Street Art (Gallery 98’s copy is signed by Cooper) features her photographs of stickers (also known as Slaps). Created by artists on USPS Priority Mail labels and other types of stickers, they were then pasted on mail boxes, street lights, and other surfaces. While stickers first emerged simultaneously with tagging in the late 60’s, they only became popular in the 90s and early 2000s, and are today considered a dominant form of street art.
Martha Cooper Ephemera
Martha Cooper, Tag Town, 108-Page Book, 2008
Martha Cooper, Tag Town, 108-Page Book, 2008. Book Size: 10 x 7.75 inches
Martha Cooper, Going Postal: Mailing Label Street Art, 96-Page Book Signed by Cooper, 2008
Martha Cooper, Going Postal: Mailing Label Street Art, 96-Page Book, SIGNED by Cooper, 2008. Book Size: 6.5 x 6.5 inches — Available for Purchase
Inside: Stickers by Stain
Inside: Stickers by Aiko
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