Originally from Maryland, Martha Cooper began photography at the age of three.
At sixteen, she graduated from high school and received an arts degree from Grinnell College in 1962. She taught English as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand.
After a motorbike trip from Bangkok to London, she graduated in anthropology from Oxford University. Her first experience in artistic photography came during a stay in Japan, where she decided to capture images of intricate tattoos.
Beginning in the 1960s, she worked as an intern at National Geographic. During the 1970s, Martha Cooper worked as a photographer for the New York Post. She is best known for documenting the emerging graffiti scene of the 1970s and 1980s in New York City.
Her photographs have also been published in the Smithsonian and Natural History, as well as in dozens of books and magazines. As soon as her contract with the New York Post ended, Martha Cooper began photographing children in her New York neighborhood. She met a young boy, Edwin Serrano (He3), with whom she roamed the streets looking for graffiti. He explained to her that graffiti was an art form in its own right and that each artist imposed his nickname on a surface.
Edwin Serrano introduced her to the American graffiti artist Dondi White, who became the first artist to allow the photographer to accompany him and immortalize his work. Martha Cooper was fascinated by the underground subculture created by these graffiti artists. In 1984, Maria Cooper and the American photographer Henry Chalfant published their photographs of New York graffiti in the book Subway Art, considered "the bible of street art".
By 2009, sales had reached nearly 500,000 copies. In the 1980s, she worked briefly in Belize to photograph the people and archaeological remains of Mayan culture at sites such as Nohmul and Cuello.
For the art project One week with 1UP, conducted in collaboration with photographer Ninja K, Martha Cooper invites viewers to follow a collective of Berlin graffiti artists through their favorite graffiti locations. Martha Cooper is the director of photography at City Lore, New York’s center for urban popular culture.
