Thomas Joshua Cooper: The World’s Edge
Thomas Joshua Cooper: The World’s Edge
For 50 years, Thomas Joshua Cooper has been making photographs outdoors. Often realized through intense physical travel to remote and isolated sites, these stunning, large-scale, black-and-white photographs encapsulate the psychological impact of the place through geographic and atmospheric details. The exhibition, comprising 65 large-scale and 75 8 x 10 black-and-white photographs, showcases Cooper’s The Atlas of Emptiness and Extremity, The World’s Edge, the Atlantic Basin Project, which he first embarked upon in 1987, to chart the Atlantic Basin from the extreme points of each north, south, east, and west coordinate. Using a 19th-century Agfa Ansco view camera, his singular exposure of each site includes neither a horizon line nor the terrain below his feet, but rather the surrounding “sea spaces” that are unique, dissimilar, and not readily identifiable. For him each place is a point of departure allowing contemplation of the ocean’s emptiness beyond the extreme points of the land.
This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Generous support was provided by Lannan Foundation. Additional support was provided by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.
All exhibitions at LACMA are underwritten by the LACMA Exhibition Fund. Major annual support is provided by Mr. and Mrs. Anthony and Lee Shaw, Kitzia and Richard Goodman, Jerry and Kathleen Grundhofer, Meredith and David Kaplan, and Jeffrey Saikohn, with generous annual funding from the Judy and Bernard Briskin Family Foundation, Louise and Brad Edgerton, Edgerton Foundation, Emily and Teddy Greenspan, Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross, Mary and Daniel James, David Lloyd and Kimberly Steward, Kelsey Lee Offield, David Schwartz Foundation, Inc., Andy Song, Lenore and Richard Wayne, and The Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation.
Image: Thomas Joshua Cooper, First Light—The South Indian Ocean, the Cape of Good Hope, #2, South Africa, the Southwest-Most Point of Continental Africa, 2004, Collection Lannan Foundation, © 2019 Thomas Joshua Cooper, photo courtesy of the artist
- Sep 22, 2019–Feb 2, 2020
- Resnick Pavilion
This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Generous support was provided by Lannan Foundation. Additional support was provided by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.
All exhibitions at LACMA are underwritten by the LACMA Exhibition Fund. Major annual support is provided by Mr. and Mrs. Anthony and Lee Shaw, Kitzia and Richard Goodman, Jerry and Kathleen Grundhofer, Meredith and David Kaplan, and Jeffrey Saikohn, with generous annual funding from the Judy and Bernard Briskin Family Foundation, Louise and Brad Edgerton, Edgerton Foundation, Emily and Teddy Greenspan, Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross, Mary and Daniel James, David Lloyd and Kimberly Steward, Kelsey Lee Offield, David Schwartz Foundation, Inc., Andy Song, Lenore and Richard Wayne, and The Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation.
Image: Thomas Joshua Cooper, First Light—The South Indian Ocean, the Cape of Good Hope, #2, South Africa, the Southwest-Most Point of Continental Africa, 2004, Collection Lannan Foundation, © 2019 Thomas Joshua Cooper, photo courtesy of the artist
Labels for selected works in the exhibition include numbers for reference with the Artist Commentary.