Thomas Joshua Cooper

Picture-maker and story-teller, Thomas Joshua Cooper has spent an entire working lifetime chronicling the qualities of time through his photographs of the earth’s topography.

His black-and-white images explore specific points on the globe - often at the most remote areas, where land and sea meet. Cooper begins by choosing a location on a map, researching it, and then setting out to locate and photograph it. Working solely with a 19th century Agfa Ansco camera and custom made photographic plates, Cooper captures these locations in one frame, using a single exposure before departing.

The works in Allure are part of the artist's project The Atlas of Emptiness and Extremity. Inspired by Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world in the 16th century, Cooper set out to make pictures at the cardinal points of the extreme north, south, east and west of all five continents and the North and South poles surrounding the Atlantic basin. He has travelled the Atlantic Coast and Ocean for over three decades on a journey which concluded with a defining exhibition The World’s Edge, currently on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.