From Thomas Joshua Cooper: The World's Edge © 2019 by Michael Govan and Rebecca Morse. Photography © 2019 by Thomas Joshua Cooper. Published by DelMonico Books / Prestel. — From *Thomas Joshua Cooper: The World's Edge* © 2019 by Michael Govan and Rebecca Morse. Photography © 2019 by Thomas Joshua Cooper. Published by DelMonico Books / Prestel.

In my opinion, no one captures nature like Thomas Joshua Cooper. Perhaps that’s too vague, seeing as we all take in the world around us uniquely and synthesize our understanding based on individual experience. Perhaps a more cogent way off putting it is that nobody conjures and communicates so effectively as Cooper. To look at his work is to be taken to a higher place above the clamor of the world, a mystical tour of untouched places overlooked by the machines of society. In his latest book, The World’s Edge, Cooper carves out a spotlight for terrain previously reserved for the sun’s rays alone.

Cooper reveals the genesis behind the volume, a massively collaborative effort, united by his inimitable image. After a few essays from colleagues and a poem by Theodore Roethke, he takes the reader’s hand and leaps off the diving board of exposition, plunging you into the vastness of a world it seems only he has been to. Fear not, however. While he hands you the oars to row yourself, he doesn’t leave you rudderless. Immersive captions accompany each photograph, reassuring you that these are indeed real places, though even if you make it there yourself, it won’t quite be how Cooper’s steadily black-and-white lens captures it.

As the title of the book denotes, this volume concerns itself with the edges of the world. California, Chile, South Africa, Gibraltar, Antarctica, Norway, Panama. All of these, ends of the roads that lead to their seas. To push off from any of these shores is to leave behind not only a country but a continent. Ahead is mystery unbound and that sense of mystery, permeating all of Cooper’s work, is what makes these photographs so remarkable. Anyone with a camera can snap a shot of a seascape. But it takes a true traveler to communicate the paths and pasts that lead you to your leaping and the possibilities and potential that awaits. Another key element to the power of his work is knowing his limits as a guide. Cooper doesn’t presume to tell you what you should or will find. Instead, he stays on the sands, content to illuminate and inspire, leaving the exploration all up to you.

Take the Pillars of Hercules, for instance. For hundreds of years, they were the edge of the Western world. The southern pillar heralded Africa and the north, Europe. Gatekeeping the Mediterranean, they were the most absolute of nautical borders. To look on them now seems almost comical. The globe is such an immense place that to think of two piles of rocks as being an edge of the world, but they were and, to the people living around them, they still are. Pivot down to Antarctica, as close to the edge of the world as can be, and you feel yet another brand of infinity because once Cooper takes you there, you see that past the edge was another place all along. And once you cross that place, you arrive at Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope. The North Pole is the same. The concept of the edge or border of an ocean is almost amusing. Why would a single entity have boundaries? I suppose one could beg the same question of cities, counties, and countries on continents? What does a political border even mean? The land doesn’t change but the people do.

These are questions for another day, though. More than anything else, Cooper’s work here sponsors curiosity and wonder. The questions and conclusions you come to along your journey are yours and yours alone. He’s just there to give your rowboat the push it needs beyond the edge.

Sep 17 Book Review: The World's Edge

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