Kevin Cooley Shoots the Night

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As you may recall, there were a proliferation of openings last Thursday, and it was quite a challenge to A. nudge yourself into the galleries and B. actually see the work. I managed to do this somewhat successfully, though, and when I awoke the next day, two artists were still lodged in my head: Jane Hammond from Gallerie Lelong, and Kevin Cooley from Massimo Audiello.

Cooley reminds me of a morph of Todd Hido and Sarah Pickering…. beautiful nightscapes with perfectly placed interventions. I ran into Ofer Wolberger at Cooley’s show, and he was delighted with the press release for the show, entitled At Light’s Edge. I thought it was rather nice, too. So here are some of Cooley’s images, paired with the text.

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Badlands 2, Lyman, Wyoming

Return to Nature has always been a distress signal of mankind,
signifying the need to take care of ourselves and to get back to
basics. Be it the classical or neoclassical Arcadia, Jean Jacques
Rousseau’s return to our primitive being, William Wordsworth or Samuel
Coleridge’s search for solitude, or Caspar David Friedrich’s discovery
of landscape as the representation of God, Nature has always been our
mother and one of our ultimate refuges.

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Wind River Canyon, Thermopolis, Wyoming

Kevin Cooley’s new photographs plunge directly into this
Romantic tradition of landscape, and he enriches it with contemporary
concerns.

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Grand Tetons, Driggs, ID

Nature is the muse, and man is the explorer. Breathtaking
night views of American landscapes are illuminated by eerie distress
signals, possibly messages coming from above or vice-versa. Light
shooting through the sky highlights an endangered beauty and at the
same time represents a divine or extraterrestrial phenomenon.

Taking photographs, for Cooley, is a lonely job, infused
with silence and meditation. This contemplative mood, along with a
sense of wonder and fear, permeates the entire new body of work.

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Horno Fire, Camp Pendleton, California

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Planes Landing LAX runway 24L

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Takeoffs JFK Runway 13R

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Landing Pattern LGA

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Planes Landing MSP

See Cooley’s site, here. There are even daytime pictures.

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  1. j l at 3:06 pm

    the pictures from the airplanes reminds me the “time” being capture in Michael Wessely´s open shutter photographs…a german photographer who make long exposures that could take years!

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