Mark Cohen | |
---|---|
Born | 1943 (age 80–81) |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Photographer |
Mark Cohen (born August 24, 1943) is an American photographer best known for his innovative close-up street photography. [1] [2]
Cohen's major books of photography are Grim Street (2005), True Color (2007), and Mexico (2016). His work was first exhibited in a group exhibition at George Eastman House in 1969 and he had his first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1973. [3] He was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1971 and 1976. [4] and received a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1975. [5]
Cohen was born and lived in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania until 2013. He attended Penn State University and Wilkes College between 1961 and 1965, and opened a commercial photo studio in 1966. [6]
The majority of the photography for which Cohen is known is shot in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area (also known as the Wyoming Valley), a historic industrialized region of northeastern Pennsylvania. Characteristically Cohen photographs people close-up, using a wide-angle lens and a flash, mostly in black and white, frequently cropping their heads from the frame, concentrating on small details. [7] He has used 21 mm, 28 mm and 35 mm focal length, wide-angle, lenses and later on 50 mm. [8] Cohen has described his method as 'intrusive'; [9] "They're not easy pictures. But I guess that's why they're mine." [10]
Discussing his influences with Thomas Southall in 2004 [9] he cites ". . . so many photographers who followed Cartier-Bresson, like Frank, Koudelka, Winogrand, Friedlander." He also recognizes the influence of Diane Arbus. [10] Whilst acknowledging these influences he says: "I knew about art photography...Then I did these outside the context of any other photographer." [10]
In 2013 Cohen moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. [8]
Cohen's work is held in the following permanent collections:
Robert Adams is an American photographer who has focused on the changing landscape of the American West. His work first came to prominence in the mid-1970s through his book The New West (1974) and his participation in the exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape in 1975. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and the Hasselblad Award.
Garry Winogrand was an American street photographer, known for his portrayal of U.S. life and its social issues, in the mid-20th century. Photography curator, historian, and critic John Szarkowski called Winogrand the central photographer of his generation.
Lee Friedlander is an American photographer and artist. In the 1960s and 1970s, Friedlander evolved an influential and often imitated visual language of urban "social landscape," with many of his photographs including fragments of store-front reflections, structures framed by fences, posters and street signs. His work is characterized by its innovative use of framing and reflection, often using the natural environment or architectural elements to frame his subjects. Over the course of his career, Friedlander has been the recipient of numerous awards and his work has been exhibited in major museums and galleries worldwide.
Helen Levitt was an American photographer and cinematographer. She was particularly noted for her street photography around New York City. David Levi Strauss described her as "the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time."
Mary Ellen Mark was an American photographer known for her photojournalism, documentary photography, portraiture, and advertising photography. She photographed people who were "away from mainstream society and toward its more interesting, often troubled fringes".
Frank Gohlke is an American landscape photographer. He has been awarded two Guggenheim fellowships, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Fulbright Scholar Grant. His work is included in numerous permanent collections, including those of Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the Art Institute of Chicago.
John Rivers Coplans was a British artist, art writer, curator, and museum director. A veteran of World War II and a photographer, he emigrated to the United States in 1960 and had many exhibitions in Europe and North America. He was on the founding editorial staff of Artforum from 1962 to 1971, and was Editor-in-Chief from 1972 to 1977.
Stephen Shore is an American photographer known for his images of scenes and objects of the banal, and for his pioneering use of color in art photography. His books include Uncommon Places (1982) and American Surfaces (1999), photographs that he took on cross-country road trips in the 1970s.
Henry Wessel was an American photographer and educator. He made "obdurately spare and often wry black-and-white pictures of vernacular scenes in the American West".
Bruce Landon Davidson is an American photographer. He has been a member of the Magnum Photos agency since 1958. His photographs, notably those taken in Harlem, New York City, have been widely exhibited and published. He is known for photographing communities that are usually hostile to outsiders.
Ralph Gibson is an American art photographer best known for his photographic books. His images often incorporate fragments with erotic and mysterious undertones, building narrative meaning through contextualization and surreal juxtaposition.
Linda Connor is an American photographer living in San Francisco, California. She is known for her landscape photography.
Don Donaghy was a member of the New York school of photography.
Brian Wood is a visual artist working in painting, drawing and printmaking and formerly with photography and film in upstate New York and New York City.
David Vestal was an American photographer of the New York school, a critic, and teacher.
George Krause is an American artist photographer, now retired from the University of Houston where he established the photography department.
James Welling is an American artist, photographer and educator living in New York City. He attended Carnegie-Mellon University where he studied drawing with Gandy Brodie and at the University of Pittsburgh where he took modern dance classes. Welling transferred to the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California in 1971 and received a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. in the School of Art. At Cal Arts, he studied with John Baldessari, Wolfgang Stoerchle and Jack Goldstein.
Fazal Sheikh is an artist who uses photographs to document people living in displaced and marginalized communities around the world.
Laurence Bruce Fink was an American photographer and educator, best known for his black-and-white images of people at parties and in other social situations.
Richard Renaldi is an American portrait photographer. His four main books each contain portraits of people Renaldi met in public, and some landscapes, made over numerous years with an 8×10 large format view camera. Those books are: Figure and Ground (2006)—various people throughout the USA; Fall River Boys (2009)—young men growing up in the post-industrial city of Fall River, Massachusetts; Touching Strangers (2014)—strangers posed by Renaldi physically touching in some way, made all over the USA; and Manhattan Sunday (2016)—LGBT people photographed between midnight and 10 am on Sundays mainly on the streets of Manhattan having left nightclubs.