Focus On Life: Superheroes

You can't get more true Hollywood than the characters that hang around the walk of fame, dressed as superheroes, taking pictures with tourists for tips. Michael Muller's collections of photographs capture the duality of this Hollywood existence - the grit and decay illuminated in childlike, playful, hyper-Technicolor. ...They are childhood fantasies - Batman, Stormtroopers, Spidey and Superman, revealed in their everyday dreariness. Superman's blue-black curls highlight the cracks and crevices in his face. A Stormtrooper leans nonchalantly against a grafittied wall having a smoke. Batman takes a break on a milk crate. Elvis needs glasses. The Cat in the Hat is passed out on the cool marble. The pictures zoom in on the joy and heartbreak that is part of everyday life in Hollywood.

Focus On Art: Martha Cooper

Martha Cooper is a documentary photographer who has specialized in documenting urban vernacular art and architecture for over thirty years. In 1977, Martha moved to New York City and worked as a staff photographer on the NY Post for three years. During that time she began to shoot graffiti and break dancing, subjects w...hich led to her extensive coverage of early Hip Hop as it emerged from the Bronx. Martha’s first book Subway Art (with Henry Chalfant), has been in print since 1984 and is affectionately called the “Bible” by graffiti artists worldwide.

Martha’s work has been widely exhibited in museums and galleries and published in numerous magazines from National Geographic to Vibe. She lives in Manhattan where she is the Director of Photography at City Lore, the New York Center for Urban Folk Culture.

Focus On Art: George Tooker

George Tooker (b.1920) was born and raised until age seven in Brooklyn, New York and then in Belleport, Long Island in genteel upper class surroundings, he became a figure painter whose work reflects both his privileged circumstances and understanding of those less comfortable. His subjects, often of mixed sexual and r...acial features, are often obscured by heavy clothing and appear sagging and shapeless, trapped within their own dull worlds.

Some critics have described his style as "magic realism," but he was not interested in the illusionary effects that many of the painters of that style espouse. He has regarded himself as more of a reporter or observer of society than an interpreter.

Tooker subsequently adopted a method of using egg yolk thickened slightly with water and then adding powdered pigment, a medium that was quick drying, tedious to apply, and hard to change once applied.

Fascinated by geometric design and symmetry, he works slowly, completely about two paintings a year because he spends much time searching for the underlying idea.