Photographer Chris Cook Is Able to Begin Making Work That Seems at ‘Black Life Beyond Struggle’

NOMINATED BY MING SMITH
33—NEW YORK

Chris Cook describes himself as a “native tourist” of New York who is devoted to chronicling the lifetime of cities. His e book of images of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests has been acquired by the Met, Yale University, the British Library, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. 

“The finest moments come after I’m transferring and not using a plan. I like the liberty of letting the neighborhood converse to me visually. When I’m within the studio, I’m experimenting—collaging, portray, scanning, printing. day is after I lose monitor of time and simply observe a sense. Jamel Shabazz, Roy DeCarava, and Ming Smith—their work taught me tips on how to see with emotion first. Kerry James Marshall’s precision and storytelling, Gary Simmons’s use of reminiscence and erasure, and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s uncooked urgency all formed how I strategy my very own visible language.

[My photos] ask: what are we preserving and who will get remembered? How will we translate private reminiscence into public document? And they ask the viewer to acknowledge Black life past wrestle—there’s softness, pleasure, humor, model, love. What occurs after we heart these truths? I feel loads concerning the worry of erasure—of individuals’s lives, histories, and voices being missed or misplaced. I’m additionally confronting private fears, like shedding family members or forgetting the place I come from. These photographs function a bridge: private sufficient to disclose fact, but public sufficient to spark dialogue.”

Chris Cook, Kids on the Block, 2023.

Chris Cook, Washington Square Park, 2023.