Thomas Joshua Cooper: Refuge
- Submitting institution
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Glasgow School of Art
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 6981
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
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- Publisher
- Prestel
- ISBN
- 9783791358185
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- May
- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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3
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This monograph presents a new series of 20 photographs titled ‘The Parrish Pictures’ (2016-18), which has never before been published/exhibited. It is contextualised by a further 29 of Cooper’s previously published photographs, upon which the new series builds. In other words, 40% of the work included is new. Worth noting too is that each picture carries two dates: the date it was made in the field and the date it was developed as negative/print. In these cases, a small number of works were made prior to 2014 but printed thereafter e.g. works dated 2000/2015 (p.29 and p.31); 2000/2017 (p.51).
This monograph accompanied the exhibition Thomas Joshua Cooper: Refuge at Parrish Art Museum (5.5 – 28.7.19), which comprised 49 photographs of waterways in and around New York State. It includes a new series of 20 photographs (2016-2018), which Cooper names ‘The Parrish Pictures’; the outcome of a 10-day exploratory commission to make work in the East End of Long Island, along its coastline and inland waterways, at the invitation of Parrish Art Museum, sponsored by the Lannan Foundation.
Cooper’s research sits at the intersection of art and photography and draws on cultural geography, especially Roderick Nash, Yi-Fu Tuan and Denis Cosgrove. His works are not identifiable documents of a place or time but pictures that transcend the moment of their making. In terms of method, his is a time-consuming and risky process. Cooper consistently uses a 19th century box camera, with no digital back up, makes all of his own photographs in the field – often just one shot in each location – and prints them himself; he is one of few remaining artists doing so.
This body of new research concerns itself with what Cooper refers to as ‘the near field,’ which is the natural, though somewhat domesticated spaces immediately surrounding the urban. The far field - an interest of his other body of work - and the near field intersect but never meet. As well as Cooper’s usual seascapes, this body of work includes pictures of woodlands and high grasses - where Cooper turns his back on the ocean - made in areas of historical significance including the Shinnecock Indian Reservation and townships of Long Island. In particular, this new body of work reflects on the history of Long Island as a place of refuge, for Native Americans, for successive generations of immigrants and for artist communities.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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