“The whole county is my studio. I used to go work under a certain bridge if it was pouring, because people used to hide there from the rain”
– Mark Cohen
Mark Cohen shot from the hip, taking photographs with his camera hung low as his took a daily walk in New York City in July 1973. Cohen spent a month living in a dorm room at NYU while taking part in a film production workshop. His daily classes were short so he used his free time to walk around the city with his camera. Only a few of the images were printed at the time and the vast majority remained unseen, except as negatives, until now. The pictures are from Tall Socks published by GOST.
Mark Cohen first came to be noticed with his exceptional pictures of life in his native Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania.
‘There is usually a certain “triggering” point in my view of the scene. Something that catches my eye. Many of the frames are made quickly and the compositions are accidental. This picture of the child going along the cobblestone street with the board is intimate and sudden, very beautiful.”
– Mark Cohen
“The man with the spoked wheel cart is holding the bored, yawning dog. His leash is attached to a harness with metal rivets. Immediately behind the dog and in a strict rectangle of a still life is a wooden box of fruit. Under the dog’s jaw, on the sidewalk, is a plastic bag. The rest of the picture is open space. A lot of formal visual activity is going on but it’s swirling around the dog and fruit. In 1973 I skipped this negative, but then in 2024 scanned it and properly saw it for the first time.”
– Mark Cohen
“You can clearly see the threat the girl suspects in her eyes. Compositionally, her long bare legs and arm lead up to her face in the extreme corner. The extra thigh, knee and hand of her friend diffuse her vulnerability, because if she was alone it would be a different picture. I like the mended step and the column on the left for contributing to the degraded texture. And in the centre is a dark open doorway. It’s all unplanned, an accident, driven by my glance at the legs emerging from the worn setting as I went by.”
– Mark Cohen
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