Thomas Joshua Cooper

Cooper, Thomas Joshua (b. 1946), American photographer whose fastidiously crafted monochrome images equate the grandeur and lyricism of the natural world with spiritual revelation. Born in San Francisco, he moved to England in 1972 to teach at Trent Polytechnic, Nottingham. In 1982, after a short period as a freelance, he became the founding head of the department of fine art photography at Glasgow School of Art. Using a late 19th-century 20 × 25 cm (8 × 10 in) field camera, he makes connected bodies of landscape work in which metaphysical concerns take precedence over topographical meaning. His approach is distinguished by his preference for presenting works in triptych or multiple-image format, with the different modes of his engagement with the landscape identified by the use of titles such as ‘Guardian’, ‘Indication Piece’ or ‘Premonitional Work’. In addition to his extensive practice as an exhibiting artist, he has produced a number of artist's books, including Between Dark and Dark (1985), Dreaming the Gokstadt (1988), and Simply Counting Waves (1994). With Paul Hill he published Dialogue with Photography (1979), a collection of interviews with 21 master photographers.

— Ray McKenzie