Karate Stance, 1977

Legs and Boy in Pool, 1977

Family Walking, 1977

Mark Cohen occupies a conspicuous place among the innovators of American street photography. Cohen’s photographs are intrusive, fragmented keyhole perspectives depicting the street-life of his hometown, Wilkes-Barre, PA. Taken in the 1970s and 1980s, True Color is a project originally commissioned by the George Eastman House. Mark Cohen’s color images demonstrate chaotic visual narratives, at times harshly flashed, that denote the artist’s invasive style illustrating this American coal-mining region. A somewhat hermetic visual predator, Cohen deliberately seeks closeness to his subjects and finds a way to ambush partial details, a pink jump rope, a green car, a child’s set of bare limbs.