Kirsten Cooke
Introduction
In conversation with Nick Cooper...
Kirsten's philosophy
It takes only one look at the pictures adorning the walls of Yeovil photographer Kirsten Cooke’s home, to tell you that she has an uncommon approach to her art. Not only are the subjects themselves diverse, but her style often varies between the different types of photograph she takes, or the recording medium she uses. So much so, that it is not necessarily obvious to the viewer that they have been taken by the same photographer. At times, her pictures indicate that she is not a photographer in the traditional sense while, enigmatically, others suggest that she definitely is.
Intrigued to learn more about her work, we chat over coffee and it soon becomes clear that the camera itself is only one part of Kirsten’s story. “I was a fine artist before I was a photographer. I approach everything from an artistic base, rather than a technical one,” explains Kirsten, who was educated in Somerset before going on to
Goldsmiths to study for her degree. “I was there at a time when technology was very basic and we played around with translating photographs onto silk screens and printing fabric from them. So I started using my camera as an extension of myself, like a pencil or a paintbrush. I have always viewed my camera as a tool and a means to an end, rather than just something that produces images,” she adds.
Kirsten returned to college to improve her darkroom skills. She has a particular fascination with photographing people within their environment and, by the second year of the five year course, which led to her becoming an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society, found that her skills were in such demand that photography soon became her career.
However, Kirsten sees herself as a mixed-media artist, first and foremost, rather than purely a photographer. She will often combine photographs with card or other materials to create her finished works, or will present them in an original way which challenges the viewer’s perception of the medium. “Just because you’ve taken a photograph, it doesn’t have to stay as a physical photograph,” she says, “and because
I am very tactile I like to cut and paste things and play with ideas and give myself some time to experiment.”
The eclectic mix of artists whose work she admires helps to explain Kirsten’s broad-ranging approach to her own work. Those photographers among them have mainly come to the medium from an art base, rather than a technical one. Her list includes photographers like Roger Fenton and Cecil Beaton, perhaps noted for a formality of style and attention to detail in black and white portraiture, as well as painters and sculptors, ranging from Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Vermeer, to
Kandinsky, Moore and Hepworth.
Being armed with this information helps you to better appreciate Kirsten’s work; to perhaps understand a little of what she is about. Although she will sometimes use a digital camera, by far the majority of Kirsten’s photographic work is done with film, which she prefers, involving her in the darkroom working she enjoys.
The choice of medium she uses, either colour or black and white film, often has quite a bearing on her finished work, too. Her black and white photography often has a measured, classical quality. If taking a portrait, for instance, she might spend much time talking to the subject, paying meticulous attention to the details of the
surroundings, before pressing the shutter and getting her shot, just as the photographers she admires might have done. “When I take portraits, I like to them to tell a story and make a statement on the person at that point in time,” says Kirsten.
Her approach to colour photography, on the other hand, often produces results which are more abstract, more modernist, in nature. “I’m more purist about black and white photography than I am about colour but, even then, I have the ability to play about and change things in the darkroom,” Kirsten tells me, as she shows me a photograph of coloured melting ice. “With colour, I like to allow myself time to let my mind
wander and to push the boundaries.” Three large panels hanging on her sitting room wall help to illustrate the point. Back-lit in the colours red, white and blue, they feature a series of abstract subjects which caught her eye. “They are photographs that have been translated onto acetate, each with about three photographs layered on them,” she explains. “Because I’m dyslexic, I tend to gravitate to letters or numbers when I’m photographing for myself. These are a combination of shots of the London Underground, the Tate St. Ives and graffiti in Denmark, which were all put together to make up this triptych.”
As well as exhibiting a couple of times each year and lecturing to other photographers around the country, Kirsten teaches photography part-time at Yeovil College but, at the time we met, she has just completed her MA in Photography/Fine Art. “It’s was very exciting and gave me the opportunity for self-exploration, to translate ideas and to
take my photography to another level. It’s a chance to experiment with things I wouldn’t otherwise have done,” enthuses Kirsten, “The thing about photography is that it’s so diverse. There are so many ways that you can translate images, so you can still come up with original ideas and ways of dealing with things and it’s not exhausted yet.”
To see more of Kirsten’s work, visit her website.