Featured CPAC Member: Ron Cooper - Colorado Photographic Arts Center

01 Nov Featured CPAC Member: Ron Cooper

Posted at 12:01h in Featured Member - Past by Volunteer

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Member Since: 2016

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ron Cooper is a travel, documentary and portrait photographer based in Denver. He began exploring photography ten years ago after retiring early from a corporate career. Cooper travels extensively in pursuit of images that reflect local cultures and people. His emphasis in recent years has been on portraiture with the objective of “introducing” viewers to the people he meets and photographs at home and around the world.

His work has been exhibited in juried group shows at Colorado Photographic Art Center, Center for Fine Art Photography (Ft. Collins), Southeast Center for Photography (Greenville, SC), Naples (FL) Art Association, PhotoPlace Gallery (Middlebury, VT), ACCI (Berkeley, CA), Blackbox Gallery (Portland), Click! Photography Festival (Raleigh/Durham, NC). Solo exhibitions include Asian Journeys (2016) at Gallery MFC in Denver, Faces (2016) at the Hamilton Family Gallery, Children’s Hospital of Colorado, Faces of the American West (2016) at The Darkroom, Longmont, Colorado, and Pleased to Meet You: Portraits from Places Near & Far (2018) at Gallery MFC, Denver.

Cooper’s photographs have been published in Black & White Magazine, Monovisions Magazine, AAP, PDN and Photographer’s Forum.

STATEMENT: Pleased to Meet You: Portraits from Places Near & Far

My ongoing project, Pleased to Meet You: Portraits from Places Near & Far, features subjects I’ve encountered in my travels — people whose appearance and demeanor grabbed my attention and piqued my curiosity. People I wanted to meet. This project is my way of introducing these fascinating people to you.

Meeting and photographing people in diverse places and cultures is challenging and rewarding. The process has enriched my travels and my understanding of the world, and has served to reinforce my belief in the humanness that connects us all. As a western photographer making portraits in developing parts of the world, I’m sensitive to the need to actively convey my respect for the people I meet and photograph. Making an authentic portrait requires engagement and communication – by both photographer and subject. Often, that communication takes place through a translator – or through sign language. But the essence of portrait photography is participation, cooperation and openness, however it’s ultimately achieved.

In most of the images in this collection, the individuals portrayed are looking directly at the camera – and, by extension, directly at us. This approach, and the relatively simple compositions I favor for these photographs, feels honest and straightforward. My goal for these images is that they are highly accessible – and that each portrait conveys something of it’s subject’s life and circumstance – their “humanness” – and does so with respect, dignity and honesty.