Thomas Joshua Cooper: Shoshone Falls

In the summer of 2003, THOMAS JOSHUA COOPER traveled to Shoshone Falls in southern Idaho to photograph where the Snake River had tumbled across a 212 foot precipice, once one of the most sublime and inspiring landscapes in the American West. Cooper’s images were a response to the work of Timothy H. O’Sullivan, photographer on the nineteenth-century geologic and geographic surveys led by Clarence King and Lieutenant George M. Wheeler. Traveling to Shoshone Falls in 1868 and again in 1874, O’Sullivan’s images are emblematic of the seven years he spent exploring the West, capturing both the physical grandeur and emotional resonance of this unique landscape. Cooper’s photographs simultaneously engage the work of his predecessor while expanding his own formal vocabulary in a project that creates a dialogue about history, geography, and the process of photographic image making. Printed large scale in lush tri-tone, this book reproduces eighteen images by Cooper in tandem with eight albumen prints by O’Sullivan. An engaging essay by Toby Jurovics, curator of photography at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., contextualizes their work and closely examines one of today’s most compelling landscape photographers.