Feature Articles

October Issue 2000

Columbia Museum of Art Features Photography Exhibit with French Master Works Exhibit

The Columbia Museum of Art in downtown Columbia, SC, is offering the exhibition entitled, In the Faith of Beauty Photographs by Martin Cooper, which will be on view through Nov. 19.

Three related series of photographs by Martin Cooper, a Columbia native now living and working in New York City, will be presented in the three Focus Galleries that are located within the Museum's permanent collection galleries. This exhibition continues the Museum's efforts to present the work of area photographers who have taken their work to a national and international level. In 1999, the photographs of Constantine Manos were presented in the exhibition American Color.

Cooper, a 1983 graduate of Heathwood Hall with a BFA from the Parsons School of Design in New York, has focused on imagery that conveys a sense of beauty. Botanicals is a series of 15 studies of flowers, each one taking on a figurative quality and expressing a human-like emotional state. The Almagest, a body of work inspired by the ancient astronomer Ptolemy's Almagest, includes 12 representations of the signs of the Zodiac. Finally, The Altis: Portraits of the Immortals, is a series of 15 female figure studies based on the ancient Olympic games. The Altis begins its international tour at the Columbia Museum of Art. After traveling to the West Coast and abroad, The Altis will travel to Athens, Greece for the 2004 Summer Olympics.

This engaging exhibition in three parts is Cooper's homage to beauty. Cooper works in the style of the "pictorial narrative," beginning with a prolonged period of research during which he studies and absorbs myth, culture and civilization. Seamlessly blended to create a new visual language, these photographs are complex and multifaceted, yet deceivingly simple. Cooper upholds the tradition of early 20th century photographic masters by hand toning each print to achieve a unique richness and depth. Each tone is individually produced, using recipes based on late-19th and early-20th century formulas, adapted to the 21st century. Under a unifying theme of beauty, Cooper has produced images of flowers and female figures that display a mastery of the photographic process.