After a life in fashion, designer turns eye to art

"When all the boys in school were taking science, he was 'No, no, no. No doctoring for me,' " said his father, Noble Cooper Sr. "That's the way he always put it."

The Columbia native is a fashion designer by profession, earning his living as vice president for Burberry, North America, and more recently, an artist.

"Clearly I am in my own world," Martin Cooper said.

For the past eight years he has been a fine art photographer, showing a remarkable insight for someone so new to the medium. He says he's not terribly proficient. But ironically, it is the technical achievements of his painstakingly hand-toned photos of nudes and florals that first catch the eye.

A closer look shows that while the technique is there, so is the content.

""Technically I think they're gorgeous, but it goes beyond that," said curator Bill Bodine, who organized the exhibit. "He wants to look at these (subjects) and bring out something unique."

An exhibit of his photos, "In the Faith of Beauty," at the Columbia Museum of Art brings together three groups of his photographs. All are old-fashioned in several ways: he shoots with a large format camera; mixes the chemicals from scratch using 19th century recipes; and embraces traditional forms of beauty as subject matter.

Even though his darkroom work brings him closer to science, he downplays his knowledge.

"I'm the most untechnical photographer," said Cooper, dressed head-to-toe in black and looking very much like the New Yorker he has been since he moved there in 1983 to attend the Parsons School of Design.

"It's definitely not about the equipment for me."

As a child growing up in Columbia, Cooper knew early on what he wanted to do. His resume, which lists his accomplishment as a designer for Calvin Klein and Jeffrey Banks, and youngest member of the Parsons School of Design faculty, contains this entry: "1975, Decided to become a fashion designer."

He was 10.

His mentor in those early year was his grandmother, Ada Cooper, who had graduated in 1922 from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

"She taught me the body is not a flat piece of paper," he said.

Outgrowth of fashion.
Cooper's move into fine art photography was a natural outgrowth of his career in fashion since it involves so much photography, but he says he had blinders on for a long time.

"For years and years I had only one interest -- fashion," Cooper said.

In the past few years, the blinders have come off, letting him see and work in other arts as well.

"I never got dance in my life," he said, but a few years ago he collaborated with choreographer Kevin O'Day to costume dancers for the Pittsburgh Ballet and Hubbard Street Dance in Chicago.

(O'Day, who has danced with Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Project, Twila Tharp and choreographed a recent Alanis Morisette video, is married to Stacey Calvert, a dancer and old friend of Cooper's from Columbia.)

Now all of these art forms seem seamless to him.

"It's all the same thought process," he said.

All connected.
The works in the exhibit are three distinct groups, done during the past five years.

"Botanicals," consists of 16 floral studies. "The Almagest," depicts the 12 constellations known as the Zodiac. And "The Altis: Portraits of the Immortals," is inspired by the ancient Olympic games but with a feminist twist.

The museum is showing 15 pieces from "The Altis," but the group consists of about 140 pieces which Cooper hopes to show in Athens, Greece during the 2004 Olympic games. All of the models in the images are women -- and women were, upon threat of death, excluded from participating in or even watching the ancient games.

For Cooper, the process of shooting these images is a collaborative one with the models, including his wife Karen Suen, who are usually dancers. He used models who "have a sense of ownership and commitment to the project," he said.

From science to art.
When Martin Cooper decided to steer clear of the sciences, his father was a disappointed and also concerned.

"All the artists I knew were dependent on other people for a living," said Noble Cooper.

Ironically it was his father who introduced him to photography. His father says that Martin started fooling around the with camera when he was barely more than a toddler.

"I'd have it in my bedroom and turn around and he'd be out in the yard with it," said the senior Cooper.

"My father always tried to teach me about f-stop openings and shutter speeds, but I was hopelessly lost," Martin Cooper said.

No one would think that looking at his photos.

If you're going

When: through Nov. 19

Where: Columbia Museum of Art, Main and Hampton Streets.

Cost: $4 for adults; $2 for students and seniors; free the first Saturday of the month