It was a tremendous honor to design the poster for the US release of Martha: A Picture Story, an amazing biopic about trailblazing photographer and general badass Martha Cooper. She was the first female photographer for the NY Post, shot abroad for National Geographic, and most crucially documented and championed graffiti artists, b-boys, and rappers in the 70's and 80's, a time when their artistic pursuits were highly criminalized and looked down upon. Her photographs helped bring graffiti and NYC street culture to the global stage, and she is beloved by street artists around the world. She still works, and in this great film you get to see her sneak in to train yards after dark with taggers, shoot the Soweto neighborhood in her native Baltimore, and promoting the work of fellow female photographers. This was a super fun project, I loved incorporating images from her photographs and landmarks of my hometown in to this swirling design, symbolizing the beautiful and colorful world she captured in her photographs.
I took inspiration (and often directly included) Martha's photos, and the work of the artists she shot:
Some early sketches:
The original iteration of the poster:
The final:
