There Is No Eye - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 157687107X ISBN 13: 9781576871072

Publisher: powerHouse Books, 2001

Synopsis

“You are right John Cohen—Quasimoto was right....There is no eye—there is only a series of mouths—long live the mouths—your rooftop—if you don’t already know—has been demolished....”
—Bob Dylan

“There is a saying that the treasures of the universe may be found between the eyes of a horse. One could say that the treasures of the earth may be found between the eyes of John Cohen. For we find in the images offered by this humble man, the wisdom of simplicity—its music, and its silence.”
—Patti Smith

Be it in the Peruvian Andes, in Kentucky bluegrass country, in the Gospel churches of Brooklyn, or in Greenwich Village with Bob Dylan and the Beats, famed musician John Cohen’s vision transcends history, even while it distills the spirit of a period and a place. There is No Eye, Cohen’s first monograph, is a guided tour through the worlds of outsider artists, poets, and musicians. Cohen’s lyrical stories of the cultures he has encountered complement his photographs taken over the past five decades.

Featuring never-before-seen photographs of legendary Beat generation icons, from literary lions Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso to artists and photographers Grace Hartigan, Franz Kline, Red Grooms, and Robert Frank, and a panoply of American Roots musicians, from Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and Muddy Waters to Doc Watson, Elizabeth Cotton, and Roscoe Holcomb, There is No Eye captures some of the most influential artists of our time.

About this title

About the Author:

John Cohen was born in 1932 in New York City. His photographs are in the collecitons of The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Cohen studied photography and painting under Joseph Albers and Herbert Matter at Yale, and his images have been published in Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and Aperture. Cohen's award-winning films have been screened around the world, and his band, The New Lost City Ramblers, has received several Grammy nominations. He lives in Putnam Valley, New York.; Greil Marcus (Introduction) is the author of Mystery Train, Lipstick Traces, The Dustbin Of History, and Double Trouble, among other books, and writes a monthly column for Interview. Marcus was a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders until the ignominious dissolution of the all-author rock 'n roll band in 1996. Born in San Francisco, he lives in New York City.

From Library Journal:

Cohen is a photographer whose talents are put to excellent use in part because he finds himself in the right place at the right time, recording shared qualities within such widely dispersed locales as Greenwich Village's "Beat" scene, high-altitude Andean villages, and storefront churches. Cohen was a fixture in the 1950s folk-music revival (he was the guitarist in the trio The New Lost City Ramblers), who also happened to have a camera and a deeply inquisitive disposition at his service. The lyrical and moving work that resulted is collected for the first time in this monograph. The most appealing by-product of Cohen's densely textured black-and-white images is an ecumenical message that people everywhere will find ways to interpret and adapt to life by means both creative and life-giving. This message is visible in the slightly askew beer bottle in the pocket of a faceless Peruvian trumpeter, the artist Red Grooms ferrying a large painting across Third Avenue in a pram, and production stills from Robert Frank's beat opus Pull My Daisy. Many famous faces make an appearance: the crumpled forehead of Jack Kerouac, an impish Bob Dylan, a diffident Franz Kline, and a tousled, aging Woody Guthrie. However, the real meat of this fine and inspiring work is the depiction of unknown toilers in Cohen's family of man. Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: powerHouse Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 157687107X
• ISBN 13: 9781576871072
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 200