Very neat artice by the New Yorker on Thomas Joshua Cooper

[mmerig]

Bull$hit is a necessary part of being an artist. Otherwise you're just a guy with a large antique camera . . . like me.

Thanks Jim Galli, -- this is truly very helpful to me. I am very naive when it comes to the art world. It also explains many of Drew Wiley's posts.

[Drew Wiley]

(?)I don't BS. Imply that, and welcome to my Ignore list. Hopefully you were not. It always amazes me how dazed urbanites can be about rough n tumble outdoor lifestyles that are quite predictable to a different demographic - maybe not big view cameras in their packs, but things equally adventurous. But if someone does appear gullible "around the campfire", somebody is going to accommodate them.

[Kirk Gittings]

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...m=TNY_Magazine

Cooper is certainly a larger than life character who can tell a good story. I’ve known him since about 1970 and personally witnessed some of his better known exploits as a graduate student-I was an undergraduate at the time at UNM. Given that I would not discount anything attributed to him by him or anyone else. One such incident changed the course of my life. The art world needs more more people like TJC in my opinion.

[Vaughn]

I took a photo class or two from Thomas back in 1980, plus or minus a couple years...he might have been freshly out of grad school and back to teach as a lecturer where he got his undergrad degree. A Humboldtian and a closer relative to Bigfoot than I am. To him, it is not bullshit, but thoughts seriously being run through that very intelligent and photo-centered brain of his. He started up the Photography Dept at the Glasgow School of Arts, and has got the history and information to back up those thoughts. If you can't keep up, then yes, it can sound like BS. And yes, he puts that much intensity into every exposure and into every print...at a level that many do not/cannot understand.

He demanded much from his students -- he almost threw me out of his class over a misunderstanding (my fault), but several students came to my defense and the effort used by both of us to repair the student-teacher relationship made the class even more positively intense and rewarding. He is a talker and critiques went easily twice as long as usual...but it was all relevant and educational.

The author of the article may exaggerate some and try to drum up a little more excitement, but it all reads like Thomas to me.

[Jim Galli]

To clarify, I was calling bs on the article writer, not the arteest. But can anyone deny that world (fine art) is not filled with plenty of the same. It was a fine read. I enjoyed it.

[Jim Becia]

There’s an interesting YouTube presentation by him. Well worth watching as far as I’m concerned.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MQEF1c0Q0AY

[Peter Collins]

Somebody at The New Yorker should have read the article before it went to press. Egregious writing.

[Drew Wiley]

Thanks for that link, Jim. I'll have to wait for a rainy day to endure the whole thing. Indeed an intense fellow, like the mad scientist in Back to the Future. I don't know if that frame of mind helps or hurts a person making photographs. Hard to tell over the web just how eloquent those prints might or might not be.

[Keith Fleming]

In response to Peter Collins' comments, I think it safe to say that some editor did in fact read the article before publication. But I will bet it passed muster based on the author's writing style, not the technical aspects of large format photography. In this digital world, it would not surprise me that no one on the magazine's staff knows anything about large format photography. If the draft article had been circulated on this forum, the author would have felt as if he had beaten about the head and shoulders.

Keith

[Vaughn]

A friend who also studied with Thomas used the word 'hagiography' to describe the author's writing approach on the subject of Thomas Joshua Cooper. I learned a new word today...