Silverstein Photography is pleased to announce the photographic exhibition MARK COHEN: INVISIBLE. This show is the second installment of three scheduled events, highlighting the immense influence and contributions over the last thirty years by this contemporary master photographer. Yet, while his influence has seeped into the fabric of contemporary photography, Mark Cohen has remained an enigma to those in the art world, having disappeared from public eye after serving as one of the most prominent photographers of the 70's and 80's. Nonetheless, his recent images once again demonstrate that Mark Cohen continues to reinvent the medium.
Working out of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a small town a few hours away from New York City, Mark Cohen burst into the photography scene in 1973 with solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and at the Light Gallery. Over the next decade, Cohen's numerous single-artist exhibitions would include the Art Institute of Chicago, the Marlborough Gallery, New York and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Public awareness of Cohen's work peaked in 1978, when his now iconic image of a strobe-lit girl blowing a bubble would appear on the cover on the New York Times Magazine with accompanying article, The New American Photography.Over the last three decades Mark Cohen's influence cannot be overstated, having reached cult status among contemporaries and the newer generations.
While Cohen's imagery is deeply immersed in traditional street photography, clearly influenced by such photographers as Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson, his work transcends the genre to the point of reinvention. By holding the camera in his palm and often releasing the shutter by use of his intuitive viewfinder, Cohen creates a style that captures moments never seen before in photography, so fleeting that only the final image reveals his intentions. In addition Cohen's innovative use of strobe light further enhances his ability to capture moments that our eyes cannot perceive; the eyes of a cat walking up to the artist in an alley transforms the domesticated pet into a ferocious hunter, a hand pointing at a wasp prepares the viewer for it's pending flight. It is the invasion of personal space, often uninvited and unannounced, that has become synonymous with Cohen's work.
Mark Cohen was awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships (1971 and 1976), and a NEA Photographer's Fellowship (1975), and his work has been reproduced in such publications as Photography in America (1974), Faces: A Narrative History of the Portrait in Photography (1977), Masterpieces of Photography from the George Eastman House (1985,) and Mirrors and Windows, American Photography Since 1960 (1978). His work is also in the collections of such prestigious institutions as the Whitney, the Museum of Modern Art, the Corcoran, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Fogg Museum.
