First of all, thanks to all of you for your kind words. Alert, heads up! is one of the great things that we can do in this forum. Sharing our passion, reading how the people get excited about a piece, an artist, a framed paper, a beautiful image hanging on a wall surronded by smiles...

About the Martha/Banksy issue... I love Martha Cooper figure. She is a great photographer and as a pionner, she gets from me double recognition... In her case, three layers of love cause she seems a truly beautiful person.

I always wanted a piece of her work but the graffiti related items had been always far away from my range... I could get this beautiful pic and I got it hanging in my walls...



you still can get for 100 dollars at editiononehundred.bigcartel.com/product/new-york-state-of-mind-by-martha-cooper


but as a streetart photography lover I always looked for an streetart related piece... Since that Martha/Banksy appeared. No brainer. Two legends together in a pic that has something from both. (not as the Maya Hayuk/Martha piece).

I think she doesn't need to "use" Banksy to get attention or money. She is much more than that.(Banksy didn't exist when she realised graffiti was something more than vandalism)  Big B got into her beloved city, she pictured this and she chooses it as a print for her retrospective. It's a great picture! I'm sorry for all these negative messages out there. Let's enjoy these artists!

We have a couple prints left, shot by Martha Cooper of Maya Hayuk "Chem Trails (Bowery Wall) NYC"
www.signedoriginalprints.com/products/maya-hayuk-chem-trails-bowery-wall-nyc

I can only speak for myself, but here's how I feel about this photograph.

Martha Cooper is awesome. She took an interest in graffiti and treated it as fine art when 99.9% of the world saw it as nothing more than urban decay. They associated it with drugs, gangs and a general decline in civilization. For that, she was a visionary decades ahead of the times.

Fast forward to now. Banksy is not seen as urban decay. Quite the opposite. He is more representative of gentrification. The mural she shot has been seen by millions. Everyone who would be interested in seeing it already has seen it over a year ago. It's not presenting anything new or interesting the way the vast majority of her work has throughout her career.

If she had been more engaged with BOTI as it was happening, I think she could have generated much more interesting work. If she had shot the local "entrepreneurs" charging hipsters to see Banksy's beaver, that would have been amazing. Or if she had captured the property manager knocking that ragger on his ass, it would have said something powerful about the street art scene.

This print on its own is in no way interesting to me. It's staged after the fact and it's not really clear what she's trying to say, if anything. Putting a black kid on a discarded couch doesn't add anything creatively to Banksy's message. To me, it dumbs it down.

So for me, this photograph isn't a very good piece of art in and of itself. I think most people who like it only like it because Martha Cooper shot it. To me, that's like buying a Banksy print you don't really like just because Banksy did it. Which I would never do.

The thing that bugs me about street art in general, and this forum in particular, is the hype. Some artists can do no wrong in the eyes of the herd and any dissenting options are met with righteous indignation. I think all artists and all art should be open praise or criticism on its own merits. But again, I can only speak for myself.

She looks good for her age.

If you think that's what I said, I suggest your re-read my post. Straw man arguments are annoying and invalid in any context. 

Nice detective work. I'm not sure if you noticed this or not, but that was posted by a photographer by the name of Tristan Lamour. The person on the couch happens to be the same individual. I think it's safe to say he was working with her, most likely as an assistant. So the point still stands. It was staged and is not a particularly interesting shot. 

Tristan, on the other hand, got a far better image out of the shoot in my opinion. But he doesn't have the history that Martha has, so no one is lining up to spend a couple hundred dollars on a print. Call me crazy, but I'm more interested in the art than who created it.

You're correct, I am defending the artist not the image. Because so many in here have been attacking the artist for creating and selling the image, not the imagery itself. Personally, I like the image. I like that long after the street piece is gone, the image will remain, a nice reminder of a great month in NY from a photographer that helped open the world's eyes to street art.

It's certainly not above criticism, and neither is Martha. But there's a lot of stupid running around in this thread. My comments, while quoting you, are less directed at you then at the people shitting on her.

I do see the validity in that opinion.  I don't necessarily agree that it's exploitive because Martha is as much a documentarian as she is an artistic photographer, but I see what you're saying. I'll still enjoy having a piece of her work on my wall, and a banksy image at the same time. Win win for me haha.

She didn’t even give him a chance to finish it...

I disagree. I find capturing the artist in the moment far more interesting than a poorly staged photo shoot. But that's just me.  

In her interview she stated the only person she has never shot but wanted to was Banksy, so don't think that was an option, but having the man himself in front of a piece would really be something, hoodie / monkey mask and all and could easily off a few thousand of those. As I said, love her body of work and have much respect for what she has done for so many years. Seems she tried something with this piece which works for some and not for others. Personally does zero for me but hey there are 75 happy owners somewhere. 

This image has its own artistic merits. It shows a then obscure artist in the act of creating his art. That very much is documentation.

Her most recent image is very different. It's a photo shoot staged in front of a mural which had already been documented by thousands of journalist and average people though traditional and social media. I don't see a staged photo shoot after the fact as documentation. 

Had the image been staged in a more interesting way (as Tristan did), it would have more artistic merit in my opinion. As it stands, I think it's a poor image regardless of who pushed the shutter button. 

I'm not trying to convince you that it's bad. If you like it, great. If you think it's in keeping and on par with her entire body of work, I would disagree.

Honestly I think that with "ghetto for life", with a young boy good dressed, with spray paint in hand and a Butler makes more sense the photo with a sofa and a man sitting on it instead of this Tarzan.The dude on the sofa complete the scene and seems to say "doesn't matter my social status now, I come from the ghetto and I'm still on these streets ... these Streets are my house (look at the sofa), i'm ghetto for life!" This makes sense to me...not Tarzan.