Martha: A Picture Story is an affirming and inspiring story of a trailblazing woman, who’s still very active and creative at the age of 75.
As such, it addresses the issue that senior women remain a vastly underrepresented demographic group in media.
Director Selina Miles debut feature is an expansion of her previous work in the art community which includes the viral street art video, ‘Limitless’.
An icon of the street art movement, Martha Cooper is a tiny, grey-haired figure running alongside crews of masked graffiti artists.
In telling Martha’s story this film examines the way we document our lives, whether through the application of spray paint to a train carriage, posting a selfie online, or by publishing a historic book.
In the 1970’s, as the boroughs of New York City burned, she worked as a photographer for the New York Post, seeking images of creativity and play where others saw crime and poverty. As a result, she captured some of the first images of New York graffiti, at a time when the city had declared war on this new culture. Martha and her co-author Henry Chalfant compiled these images into the book Subway Art. However, the commercial failure of the book forced Martha to leave graffiti behind, moving on to document many other hidden cultures of New York.
Two decades later, Martha discovers she has become a legend of the graffiti world, a subculture that has become a global movement. Subway Art became one of the most sold (and stolen) art books, photocopied and shared by graffiti artists for decades.
At 75, Martha finds herself navigating a culture vastly changed. The small community born from struggle and adversity, has grown into a commercial industry fueled by the rise of social media. Now every new piece of street art is immediately uploaded, and crowds line up for selfies in front of popular works. Martha struggles to find her place in this new world, driven by a passion for capturing the creativity that helps people rise above their environment.
MARTHA: DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
The serendipitous way in which this film came into existence is not unlike the way in which Martha came to produce her defining work in Subway Art. Like Martha, I was in the right place at the right time–a woman, a filmmaker, one of few directors with the relationships needed to properly access the graffiti world, and personal connection to Martha developed by working alongside her to document street art and graffiti around the world.
As a photographer, Martha’s consistency and perseverance over her five-decade career has forged enduring relationships with many of her subjects. Every interviewee, from graffiti writers in Berlin to curators in New York City told me the same thing– “anything for Martha.”
The world in which Martha Cooper began her career, prior to the information age, is unrecognizable today, and never to be repeated. This film, and Martha’s fame, arrive at a point in history where the value of photographic documentation is at risk of becoming diminished even as it becomes more popular and accessible.
I believe that Martha’s story can work to dispel some of the myths of what it means to be an older woman and send a strong message that women deserve to remain relevant, important and worthy of visibility, regardless of their age.
I hope this film can offer some lessons about blazing your own trail, reassuring our audience that it’s never too late for your true life to begin. I hope that the audience can find inspiration in Martha’s story, and be encouraged to look deeper, closer and more softly at the world around them–Filmmaker Selina Miles