Photographing the White & Dark

The Arctic and Antarctica in the work of Thomas Joshua Cooper

Based on his recent exhibition, ‘True’, at the Haunch of Venison in May 2009, Thomas Joshua Cooper will be making a presentation and engaging in conversation with Peter Seddon and the audience about this work made in the North and South Polar regions using a nineteenth century Agfa camera and specially made photographic plates. This talk and conversational exchange will be of interest to wide sections of the faculty such as the academic programme of photography, moving image and sound and areas of research activity such as the Spring Group, as well as fine art and performance. Post graduate undergraduate students and staff.

Thomas Joshua Cooper was born in 1946 in San Francisco to an American Indian father and white American mother, growing up on the vast open plains of the American west. He completed a BA (Hons) in Art, Philosophy and Literature at the Humboldt University, California in 1969 and gained an MA in Photography with distinction from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, one of North America’s most prestigious institutions for the study of photography. He moved to the UK in the early-seventies and went on to establish the Fine Art Photography course at Glasgow School of Art in 1982. He is currently Senior Researcher and Professor of Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art and has exhibited worldwide and produced many books.