Martha Cooper - Photographer Martha Cooper documented the street art of New York’s burgeoning hip hop scene of the 1970s and ’80s. When she became the first female staff photographer at the New York Post in 1977, she set out to capture the beauty and ingenuity of graffiti art and the innovators behind it, immortalizing their work in photographs of painted subway cars and urban walls. Cooper’s images validated and legitimized graffiti writers at a time when few members of the art establishment celebrated their work. Her hit 1984 photobook Subway Art, made in collaboration with photographer Henry Chalfant, came to be known as the graffiti bible, providing a template for aspiring street artists. She has also produced bodies of work documenting breakdancing cultures and spontaneous street memorials to the victims of 9/11. Cey Adams - A New York City native, emerged from the downtown graffiti movement to exhibit alongside artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. He appeared in the historic 1983 PBS documentary Style Wars, which tracks the rise of subway graffiti in New York. As the creative director of hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons’s Def Jam Recordings, he co-founded the Drawing Board, the label’s in-house visual design firm, where he created visual identities, album covers, logos, and advertising campaigns for Run DMC, Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Notorious B.I.G., Maroon 5, and Jay-Z. Adams has participated in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, MoCA, and more. His practice involves dismantling various imagery and paper elements to build multiple layers of color, texture, shadow, and light. Drawing inspiration from ’60s pop art, sign painting, and comic books, Adams’s work focuses on themes including pop culture, race and gender relations, and cultural and community issues.