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PHOTOGRAPHS by Thomas Joshua Cooper

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PHOTOGRAPHS by Thomas Joshua Cooper The Edges of the World PHOTOGRAPHS BY Thomas Joshua Cooper BOWDOIN COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART, BRUNSWICK, MAINE This brochure accompanies an exhihitioii ol the same name at the Bowdoiii Oollegc Museum of .\rt, Brimsvvick, Maine, from June through September 1, 2002. Design by Mahan Graphics, Bath. Maine Printing by Franl^lin Printing. Farmington. Maine Copy photography of Mr. ("ooper's original photographs by Wit McKiiv The Edges of the World: Phologia/j/i s by Tiiomas foshuti C.oope> 'K siipporteci by the Stevens L. Frost Kndowment Fund. Copyright ® 2002 Boudoiii College The Bowdoin College Museum of An is enormously grateful to Cecile P.m/icri of the .Sean Kellv Gallen' and Krilli D.ivis at the Hallni.irk Photographic (Collection for genriimsK l.u ilii.iiing the loan of works fiom their iiistiiutions tor this exhibition. We would also like to thank Sophia (Collier and Chula Reynolds for sharing their works for this exhibition and Billy Davis, who co- ordinated the efforts on their behalf Most of all, we thank Thomas Joshu.i ( iixipi r lor his gracious participation in this exhibition, the fourth in a summer series exploring imcommon visual investigations of the Maine landscape. On the cover 4 An Indication Piece The English Channel... 16 1/4 X 22 3/ 4 inches Cotirtesv Hailmaik Photographic Ccjiiection, Hallmark Claids. Inc., Kansas City, Missouri The Edges of the World PHOTOGRAPHS BY Thomas Joshua Cooper The Edges of the World: Photographs by Thomas Joshua artists have been assigning themselves for centuries when Cooper is the fourth in a series of summer exhibitions depicting Maine—Cooper is clearly more interested in the organized by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art show- recurring rocks and desolate cliffs, as well as in the subtle casing unconventional depictions of the Maine landscape. distinctions of the ocean, captured as it passes through This year we feature the photography of Thomas Joshua one of its constantly fluctuating moods. Cooper, in which the rocky coast of Maine and its seas are There are few better ways to describe Cooper's photo- seen within the larger context of the edges of the world. graphs than haunting—a word to which a number of crit- The body of work exhibited here was conceived and ics have resorted. To some extent this quality comes from begim when the artist visited Maine in 1996. the tremendous silence found in Cooper's images of the Thomas Joshua Cooper's series of approximately 100 sea. Compared, for instance, to nineteenth-centun photographs, of which this exhibition includes nine, American renderings of the sea in which artists strove depicts the water and shores of Great Britain, Greenland, to capture everything from the smell and warmth of the Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Maine, and Massachusetts. summer sea air to the loud crashing waves of a stormy These glimpses of land and significant seas are similar to sea (Winslow Homer is only the first example to come settlers as they to mind) Cooper's work offers no such overt drama. those that the English would have seen , journeyed to the New World on the Mayflower m 1620. Instead Cooper asks himself "How little information can Using an 1898 field camera, a large, cumbersome piece 1 have in the photograph while still retaining aspects of of equipment, Cooper usually makes pictures from just realism?" For instance, in Cooper's photographs we tend off the shore or right on its edges, often from the most to see waves as they are forming far out at sea; instead of extreme points of the coastline. Wliile the sites are witnessing the dramatic climax of the wave's passage as it described in detail by Cooper in the title of each work, collides with the land, we observe its eerie, noiseless for- the locations themselves at first look eerily similar—the mation. In addition to the silence of these photographs, same barren, jagged rocks, the same vast bodies of grey we notice the often precarious position in which we are water. Rather than tiying to capture the discrete nature placed (via the precarious position in which the photo- and character of the different coastlines—a task that grapher must have placed himself) to view these silent 3 8. A Premonitional Work Muskeget Sound and the North Atlantic Ocean... 16 1/4 X 22 3/4 inches Courtesy Hallmark Photographic C^ollection, Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City, Missouri seas. This sensation is intensified b\' the fact that the hori- moods by Ck)oper in the darkroom, jirimarily b\ his ( hem- zon lines foimd in most traditional landscapes are absent ically o\er-painting the images—that is, laving down tones in Cooper's photographs, which further contributes to the of indigo and burgimdy after exposing the images onto sensation of being imminently engiilfeci by the sea, or of the paper. observing the water from dizzying heights. In addition to the technical and physical feats he per- Cooper's distinctive methods give ns some additional forms to execute his photographs, Cooper alludes to a purchase on the tremendous spiritual presence found in history that is rarely, if ever, evident on the surface of his work. Cooper visits the site where he is going to photo- the Atlantic Ocean, but whose ghostly presence is embed- graph a number of times before making the picture. He ded within the sea. Cooper's views of the New World are observes it at different times of day and under various usually titled "Indications" or "Premonitions," suggesting weather conditions. When the right moment finally both anticipation and the fear of the unknown, emotions arrives—a moment his long experience has trained him probably felt by the passengers of the Mayjlouicr. Exam- to recognize—he makes one and only one exposure. ining Cooper's photographs from that perspective, we Cooper's intellectual and emodonal understanding of could, for instance, interpret the spectral form in the the places he photographs, and the manner in which water produced by a very long exposure in A Premonilioruit that understanding is transmitted through his work, Work: Muskcff't Sound and Ihc Xorlli Al/rinlir Ocean, Looking are similar to the work of the nineteenth-century photo- N., N. E. — Yi'l Again, Toxcards Ihr \rw World, From Sunset to grapher Timothy O'Siillivan, who greatly influenced him. Full Moonrisr, Wasquc Point . Chappaquiddick Island, Martha's O'Sullivan, who photographed extensively in the Amer- Vineyard, Mn^sarhiisells. fS. \ 2000-2001, (The Southernmost ican West, felt a close connection to the land, which is Point oj ( '.h<ipp(i(juiddi(l; hiaiid) as representing the wav that evident in his photographs, a connection that was, as the Pilgrims may have imagined their nebulous future Peter Bunnell observes, less about the land as place and while on board the Mayflower. Interspersed with works more about its spirit. • Cooper, too, in an almost ritualized titled "Indications" and "Premonitions" are others tided manner, identifies simultaneously inviting and forbidding "Looking Towards the Old World." One can imagine these places and represents them as sacral sites. same passengers looking back with ambivalence towards The intensity we find in Cooper's pictures is increased the motherland from which they were forced to break ties. to a degree by the artist's darkroom technique. Cooper In Looking 'Fowards the Old World: The Atlantic Ocean, The frequently photographs in the fall and the winter when Bay oJ Fundy, West Qiioddy Head (The Eastern Most Point of the light is especially crisp, even severe. The severe light, Continental America), Maine, USA, 1996-1999, the surging which allows him to capture deep contrasts and the sea perhaps functions as a metaphor for the Pilgrims' strong, intricate lines of his forms as well as the textures internal feelings of deep and irreparable loss. The most of the water, is transformed into differently dramatic unusual photograph of tliis series, A Premonilional Work: 5 Looking Toward the Old World. ..Maine... 16 X 23 inches Courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, New York Cape Cod Bay—Looking N., N.E. —Towards the Old World, turally justified work and thus not to be questioned as First Encounter Beach, Near Eastham, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to its raison d'etre."^ Cooper celebrates the grandeur of USA 2000-2001, (From this site the Pilgrim Settlers first encoun- nature while simultaneously making clear that it canncit tered Native Americans), depicts dune grasses bent down be understood as a neutral or stable phenomenon. toward the ocean by force of a receding wave, reminding The sea represented the unknown and the ungraspable us that this land did indeed have life on its shores before to the Pilgrims. Cooper's photographs of the sea, in turn, the Pilgrims arrived, a life that the Europeans would provide us with the opportunity to revisit this particular alter forever. historic journey, less to review its facts than to be remind- It would be easy—perhaps too easy—to reduce ed of the Pilgrims' fear, foreboding, resignation, anxiet), Cooper's photographs and readings of them to the fact hope, loss, and the eventual cataclysm for the Native that he is part Native American and spent his youth on Americans associated with that journey. These photo- reservations in the West. While Cooper's backgroimd graphs suggest that the "promised land" may not have certainly informs this particular body of work, it is always looked very promising to these seafaring refugees important to point out that most of his work over the of the seventeenth century. Simultaneously, they intimate last fifteen years has dealt with seas and rivers in relation something of the impending tragedy that would take to the history of human migrations, including migrations place as a result of this journey, and in doing so thev of the Scots, Irish, Portuguese, Scandinavians, Germans, capture a moment of American history at once inaugural and Mexicans, to name only a few.
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