Grand Tetons, Driggs Idaho

Return to Nature has always been a distress signal of mankind, signifying the need to take care of ourselves and to get back to basics. Be it the classical or neoclassical Arcadia, Jean Jacques Rousseau's return to our primitive being, William Wordsworth or Samuel Coleridge's search for solitude, or Caspar David Friedrich's discovery of landscape as the representation of God, Nature has always been our mother and one of our ultimate refuges.

Cooley's photographs plunge directly into this Romantic tradition of landscape, and he enriches it with contemporary concerns. Nature is the muse, and man is the explorer. Breathtaking night views of American landscapes are illuminated by eerie distress signals, possibly messages coming from above or vice-versa. Light shooting through the sky highlights an endangered beauty and at the same time represents a divine or extraterrestrial phenomenon.

Taking photographs, for Cooley, is a lonely job, infused with silence and meditation. This contemplative mood, along with a sense of wonder and fear, permeates the entire body of work. — Massimo Audiello