Dark Knees
Mark Cohen
Editions Xavier Barral
Hardcover
188 pages
170 x 240 mm
2013
ISBN 9782365110426
“I became a surrealist because I kept walking around the same blocks, and I started taking a picture of a guy’s shoe. I didn’t know what I was doing exactly. I was just being led by whatever I would see.” Mark Cohen, a major figure in street photography since the 1970’s. He has been relentlessly photographing his home town, Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania and its surroundings. He wasn’t interested in drawing a social portrait of this coal town, he kept for more than forty years the distant eye of a stranger, always alert. On an impulse of a split second, Cohen would go very to close to his subjects to take what has become his iconic “grab shots” often blinding them with the artificial light of the flash. In black & white and in color, his photographs taken at arm’s length, without focusing most of the time, chop off fragments of gestures, postures or body parts that run over the frame leaving only torsos without face, hands, feet, pairs of legs or simply knees. From this dazzling combination of lines, these images convey a feeling of restless energy and strangeness to daily life.
About the Artist
Mark Cohen (born August 24,1943) is an American photographer best known for his innovative close-up street photography. Cohen’s major books of photography are Grim Street (2005), True Colour (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. He was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1971 and 1976.[4] and received a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1975.
About the Publisher
Atelier EXB / Éditions Xavier Barral publish books taking a visual approach to the new shapes of photography, contemporary art and sciences. Founded in 2002 by Xavier Barral, the publishing house conceives each book where style and content meet to tell an astonishing and singular story. Raising curiosity through the image and bringing one to discover new artistic voices, subjects that belong to our history.
