PAUL COHEN

WITH AN ESSAY BY VAL WILLIAMS

Redolent with both sadness and hope Things Aren’t Always as Mother Reports is an extended series of colour portraits and landscapes made in the documentary style through which Paul Cohen interrogates the idea of family. It is a tense document about the here and now.

In the knowledge that photography can sometimes reveal what isn’t always apparent, Cohen made his sons the subject of this work in the hope that he might get to know them in a different way. By engaging in the ritual of photography with their father, Cohen’s sons become performers, enacting the traits of boyhood. The pictures raise questions in the mind of the viewer as to what these boys are about; what they are thinking, feeling and why?

Keen to observe how the place and time in which they live affects them Cohen pays close attention to how they navigate their world and where they sit within it. These pictures provide a glimpse into the boys. They also communicate the concerns of the photographer. Though nothing is explicit or explained, there is vulnerability here; happiness is always on the edge of being lost.

The cumulative effect of these pictures transcends a father’s deeply personal experience to communicate something more universal about boys growing up in the UK today.

Paul Cohen is a London based photographer. His portraits and landscapes are in the documentary style. He gained his MFA in fine art photography, documentary practice and the photo based book from Hartford University in Connecticut USA.

Val Williams is a curator and author who is a recognised authority on British photography. She is Professor of the History and Culture of Photography at the London College of Communication and has curated exhibitions for the Barbican Art Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Media Museum, Tate Britain and the British Council.

£35.00 Hardback with jacket
104 pages, 52 colour plates  
250mm x 202mm
ISBN: 978-1-911306-78-8