About

Just a camera and film.

"In using just a camera and film, and not altering the film image in making a print image, what kind of images can you make?" Cooper believes that the image is the transparency film or print film image created with the camera. So the process of producing an image includes only the camera and the film. And, for his work, the film should be manufactured with no additional saturation dyes or other chemical enhancements.

In his pursuit of purity, Cooper's images have not been manipulated. He believes in photography as an art form and that un-manipulated images which faithfully represent what the photographer sees are aesthetically very different from images that were synthesized in the darkroom or enhanced with computers.

"Artist friends would say to me, snickering a little, 'What can a camera do in making art. It is just a camera'. Then one of them asks for help in making an image with a camera (a backlit telephone pole with just the foot pegs lit). We made it, he showed it at Otis (College of Art and Design) and people said 'Wow, that's cool'."

Cooper's body of work consists of five ongoing series: Agriculture, Color Fields, Landscapes, Structures, and Trees. The work is from two separate periods, the first during the 1970s and the second starting in 2005. Images are produced as traditional photographs (c-prints), and as pigment prints on a variety of papers.

He describes his images in the context of being a child. It is his desire to reproduce that same experience through photography. "Remember when you were a child how a simple little thing could galvanize your entire being -- time stood still and you felt totally connected to the world -- there was a feeling of total contentment?" Cooper asks this question in context of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre's theory of human being's desire to "fill the hole," a void, or abyss; a dreary place perpetuated by culture and material things.

Cooper hopes that his images can lessen this estrangement between human beings and their, what he believes, true nature -- to reproduce that once-familiar childlike contentment.

"If they can, just for a split second, then maybe we can change just a little from the experience. Perhaps that experience can be built upon by more split seconds until that other 'beingness' becomes more prevalent and becomes a part of us."

With the same intent, some images are incongruous to that simple thing. Still, some images he describes as just fun. He also finds intriguing how combinations of camera, lens, film, and printing technologies "see" and produce an image no matter who is behind the camera.

In the end, it is just "a camera and film," leading to a captured moment in time. "Sometimes the images try to celebrate what these combinations produce as an image," Cooper says. "Still others try to distill the contradiction and incongruity of what we have produced as our epistemology compared to what our potential could be. And sometimes there is just insight through the beauty of forms and objects."

Photographs by Cheryl

Artist Statement

Connected to the world.

Remember when you were a child how a simple little thing could galvanize your entire being -- time stood still and you felt totally connected to the world -- there was a feeling of total contentment.

I have a belief in a self-evident truth that human nature, if nurtured properly, is innately compassionate towards everything around it, and that the human condition is naturally one of peace and a positive fullness of one's existence. It is incumbent upon cultures, through their inculcating and socializing mechanisms, to facilitate the development and realization of these innate human propensities.

However, as the political philosopher Karl Marx pointed out in his treatise on human nature, work, particularly as it relates to using one's hands, and the work environment itself through the new industrialization of economies and cultures, estranges individuals from any fulfillment derived through a person's work. This process becomes so pervasive and insidious that Joseph Campbell, the renowned writer on mythology, refers to our "economic activities" and how consumed and alienated we have become by these activities. As industrialization permeates culture, culture in turn permeates work. From this, the estrangement is exacerbated by what Jean-Paul Sartre, a philosopher generally associated with the "existentialist" school of thought, refers to as "filling a hole". This filling the hole is a drive, a need, perpetuated by culture, to acquire material things. This drive can become so powerful and transcendent, that he equates its power to the power of our senses, in effect, becoming one our senses.

As a counter point, the eastern philosopher Lao Tzu encourages us to unlearn and become as a child again in order to begin to experience our connection with nature and ourselves, and to embark on a path of existence that will help us achieve our true potential as passionate beings, enlightened custodians of nature, and the self-fulfilling contentment that is attendant to such an existence.

My desire would be to think that these images could produce the experience of a simple little thing that could galvanize your entire being -- time stops, and you feel totally connected to the world -- there is a feeling of total contentment. If they can, just for a split second, then maybe we can change just a little from the experience. Perhaps that experience can be built upon by more split seconds until that other beingness becomes more prevalent and becomes a part of us. I know it can be done. I have seen it happen. I think of my grandfather, John Thomas Oursler. I think of Ernst Leitz II and the employee oriented philosophical foundations upon which he operated his company -- remembering each employees first names and how he endeavored to design and build Leica cameras and lenses to be the finest cameras and lenses in the world. Or, the current movement in design embodied by the Scandinavians, or the "pop" and contemporary artists pushing boundaries, and the unmistakable presence one feels in looking at an old master.

I am also intrigued by how the camera, lens, film, and printing technologies combine to "see" and produce an image regardless of whom is behind the camera. Sometimes the images try to celebrate what these combinations produce as an image. Still others try to distill the contradiction and incongruity of what we have produced as our epistemology compared to what our potential could be. Some images are just fun. And sometimes there is just insight, this moment of experience, through the beauty of forms and objects.

James Cooper