Looking at Mark Cohen’s photographs does not induce the normal response to street or snapshot photography. There is no life that continues beyond the caught moment of the frame, or flight of imaginative identification with the depicted subject. The viewer cannot escape into less oppressive or disturbing narratives, as is often possible with Nan Goldin or Larry Clark.
Cohen’s photographs are hauntingly, traumatically fragmentary, with little to can grab onto or make sense of. Broken teeth, mismatched socks, dirty feet, old, blurry snow; details like these constitute much of subject matter, and if he allows more into the frame, it’s never enough. Faces are cropped at the nose, or bodies at the waste.
He apprehends things in select (but not choice, and certainly not prime) bits, details that communicate the reality of reality, never its fantasy. Cohen does away with illusion, and we, as viewers, are the better for it. Dark Knees, an exhibition of his work, is now on view at LE BAL, in Paris. A gorgeous catalogue of the same name is also available.
Mark Cohen
Dark Knees (1962-2012)
On view through December 8
LE BAL
6 Impasse de la Défense
Paris
