Untitled (Boy with football)

While Mark Cohen's imagery may have its roots in traditional street photography, his work cannot be classified simply as documentary. A more complex, disturbing subtext is implied in the images, populated by anonymous suburbanites, whose heads are out of shot or obstructed by bubblegum. Their spatial relationship to us and to one another is ambiguous and invasive. Cohen achieves these effects through his unothorodox techniques, which sometimes include releasing the camera shutter without looking throught the viewfinder, or using a strobe light to capture moments too fleeting for normal perception.

Based in Wilkes-Barre, a small mining town in Pennsylvania, Cohen first gained recognition in 1973 with solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Light Gallery, New York. John Szarkowski included his Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, June 1975 (Young woman blowing gum) in his influential book, Mirrors and Windows, American Photography Since 1960, published in 1968. His work is also held by a number of American museums, including The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Massachusetts. Cohen's awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and two Guggenheim Fellowships.