Dashwood Books signing for Dark Knees by Mark Cohen

Mark Cohen has been a major figure in street photography since the 1970's primarily known for the relentless documentation of his hometown, Wilkes-Barre, near Scranton in Pennsylvania, and its surroundings.  Dark Knees is a catalogue of Cohen's photos taken in Wilkes-Barre over the past 40 years but it is not a straight-forward social portrait of a failed mining and manufacturing community.  The images captured by Cohen are intuitive "grab shots" taken very to close to his subjects, often blinding them with the flash. Rejecting the use of the rangefinder, he will photograph at arm's length, without focusing, chopping off fragments of gestures, postures or body parts that run over the frame leaving only torsos without faces; hands, feet, pairs of legs or simply knees. Cohen recalls "I became a surrealist because I kept walking around the same blocks, and I started taking a picture of a guy'sshoe. I didn't know what I was doing exactly. I was just being led by whatever I would see."

His best book to date Dark Knees is predominantly in b&w punctuated effectively by color; paired full bleed and bound horizontally.  It includes an essay by the acclaimed photography critic Vince Aletti.

hardcover / 170 x 240 mm / 188 pages

bilingual: French/English

ISBN : 978-2-36511-042-6