Martha Cooper's Kids of the Lower East Side

[Image from MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour report]

An exhibition called "Kids" continues through Oct. 4 at the Dorian Grey Galley on East Ninth Street.

There are two artists with works featured — photographer Martha Cooper's Street Play and sculptor John Ahearn's Walton Avenue life casts. (The exhibit has been up since Sept. 10 — I only just had the chance to see it.)

I'm particularly interested in Cooper's work. Here's more about her via Dorian Grey:

From 1977-1980 Martha Cooper was a staff photographer on the New York Post. On her way back to the paper at the end of the day, she began driving through Alphabet City on the Lower East Side, looking for photos to use up the leftover film in her cameras.

Her shots captured streets filled with freely roaming children immersed in creative play. These photos have been called some of the most exuberant and memorable photographic depictions of youth and ultimately lead to her documentation of graffiti and emerging hip hop.

There's a 6-minute documentary – originally produced for MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour in 1984 — showing Cooper at work in the neighborhood... You can watch it at Vimeo here.

The Dorian Grey Gallery is at 437 E. Ninth St. between Avenue A and First Avenue. Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday noon-7 p.m., Sunday, noon-6 p.m.

Crash expected at the Houston/Bowery Mural Wall

On Saturday, a handful of graffiti artists quickly put up a tribute to legendary street photography Martha Cooper in honor of her 70th birthday. Brooklyn Street Art said that the tribute would be up for "an incredibly short time, possibly only days" on the Houston/Bowery Mural Wall.

Very true. A tipster told us that Crash (aka John Matos), one of the artists who worked on the Marty tribute, starts a new mural here today.

There's something about Marty

Here's the completed work at the Houston/Bowery Mural Wall, which was unveiled yesterday at noon ... a surprise to honor legendary graffiti photographer Martha Cooper's 70th birthday.

A growing number of graffiti artists started the tribute yesterday morning at 7. Cooper arrived with her cousin at noon, thinking that she was going to be seeing a new mural — something other than her nickname on the wall.

Brooklyn Street Art has a lot more about the event... with photos and names of everyone who collaborated on the work.

Per BSA:

The brand new “Marty” mural is up for an incredibly short time, possibly only days, so if you have an opportunity or inclination, catch this personal and public display of affection for a lady who helped us all appreciate art in the streets.

Animal NY has more from yesterday here.

Happy birthday Martha Cooper!

Legendary photographer Martha Cooper, who chronicled the city's graffiti scene in the 1970s-1980s, celebrates a birthday today. (No. 70.)

To honor (and surprise!) her, new art is going up on the Houston/Bowery Mural Wall...

Happy Birthday Martha Cooper:-) twitter.com/BKStreetArt/st…

— Brooklyn Street Art (@BKStreetArt) March 9, 2013

Brooklyn Street Art has a photo of Martha's reaction to seeing the mural right at noon.

h/t @LunaPark

The woman who "captured graffiti’s golden and assaultive years"

The Times has a feature on Martha Cooper, the photographer who captured the prolific NYC graffiti artists of the 1970s-1980s. As the paper notes, her 1984 book “Subway Art,” created with Henry Chalfant, a photographer and filmmaker, "captured graffiti’s golden and assaultive years."

The above photo from 1980 by Cooper at the East 180th Street subway platform in the Bronx.

More on Chico's farewell to the LES

As you know, Chico is leaving NYC after 30 years of creating his spray-painted murals around the LES. Over at 12ozProphet, Martha Cooper was at his going-away party last week at China 1 on Avenue B. According to Cooper, the New York City Housing Authority presented him with a plaque that read “In recognition of dedicated and inspired service to the community in which he has lived and worked for more than 30 years this plaque is presented to Antonio “Chico” Garcia, Graffiti Artist Extraordinaire, with extreme gratitude and appreciation for decades of impressionistic and powerful messages, murals and paintings you have contributed to on Manhattan’s Lower East Side at the New York City Housing Authority. Job Well Done! 2009” As Cooper wrote: "That must be the first time a city agency has celebrated a graffiti artist!"

Cooper also has several early photos of Chico's work from 1982: