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Brian Kosoff (born 1957) is a photographer from New York who has had a successful career working as both a commercial and fine arts photographer. While still in his teens, Mr. Kosoff began capturing images of urban landscapes, a genre that is indicative of his later work. However, prior to making landscape images, he pursued a career in commercial photography that earned him a roster of lucrative clients as well as the most prestigious awards in the advertising and publishing industries. In 2002 he opted to devote himself solely to producing personal work and he has had exhibitions of his work throughout the United States. In addition to writing articles for magazines and newspapers, he has also been interviewed or written about in a variety of publications. Kosoff is articulate and analytical regarding his work. He states, “While photography is inherently a two-dimensional medium, incorporating only height and width, I work to include two other dimensions: depth and time.”  A critic for the Dallas Morning News similarly noted that his images are “example[s] of two-dimensional work that operate with magic akin to the three-dimensional shimmer of rolling mercury.” Kosoff credits Irving Penn, foremost among other artists, as an inspiration for his work. Says he, “Penn is the photographer who I have the most respect for over all. He was a great still life shooter, as well as great at fashion and portrait. I know of no one who can do all of those things equally as well. And as far as still life goes, he was the best.”   Kosoff was fortunate to have had the opportunity to work as an assistant for Penn and other accomplished photographers, including Arnold Newman. The latter is widely known for his environmental portraiture. Early in Kosoff’s career he was also inspired by Duane Michals who gave Kosoff’s work positive reviews and offered advice he never forgot, ”Your best work will always be the work that means the most to you.”

Early life. Mr. Kosoff was born in New York City and spent his early years in Brooklyn. At age 15 he was introduced to photography by an uncle who was an avid hobbyist. Kosoff subsequently took classes in high school, honed his craft and discovered that he enjoyed the entire process of making images, from shooting to printing. Kosoff has noted that his “high school had a serious art department… which gave me an opportunity to study sculpture. I made work out of stone with a hammer and a chisel and, to his credit, my teacher insisted on excellent work. My school had one or two National Scholastics gold medal winners every year, which is remarkable for any school.” Ironically, he won one such medal for sculpture — but not for photography. During his senior year of high school, he began an internship that allowed him to assist several Manhattan-based editorial and advertising photographers. During his subsequent studies at the School of Visual Arts, he continued to work as a photographer’s assistant and was encouraged at age eighteen to bring his portfolio to a newspaper and a gallery. This resulted in assignments for the “Village Voice” and the first solo exhibition of his photographic work at Third Eye Gallery. The exhibition warranted acknowledgement on the coveted “short list” in the New York Times for recommended shows. As a result, he opted to leave school and pursue photographic assignments, and while still in his teens his first magazine assignment, for New York Magazine. Kosoff continued to produce editorial images, and even magazine covers before he turned 21, his burgeoning career allowed him to open his own studio on 5th Avenue, in the heart of Manhattan’s photo district.

Commercial career. Starting in the late seventies, Kosoff worked for magazines, corporate clients and advertising agencies. He amassed both a cache of high-profile clients as well as nearly three-dozen national awards, including Clio Awards, one of the highest achievements in the industry. After a highly successful 25-year career in commercial work, Kosoff embarked on a very different path that he found far more rewarding. In the late nineties he made a trip to Death Valley and it became a proverbial “game changer.” Kosoff, enamored by the sand dunes and mountains of California, was equally intrigued by the peace and serenity they conveyed. He began attempting to capture both the landscapes he saw and the mood they invoked in images — and that emerged as his primary life’s work. In 2001 his wife urged him to join a co-op gallery in Piermont, New York and after a 24-year absence, he again began to show his personal work. The reaction and sales were encouraging and, at that point, Kosoff sought gallery representation in New York City. Before his Piermont exhibition ended, he signed with the Edward Carter Gallery in NY. In short order, other galleries followed. In 2002, at age 44, Kosoff closed his NYC studio to solely pursue personal work. It’s a move he has never regretted.

Fine art photography. Kosoff learned valuable skills while producing projects for Fortune 500 companies that carried over into his work photographing landscapes. Advertising and corporate have no tolerance for inefficiency or error. Thus, he began applying methodical precision to work he found profoundly moving on an emotional level. His fondness for early-morning light and a “less-is-more” minimalism have been brought to bear upon landscapes that document his lengthy travels, most often in North America and Europe. One writer, Joe Farace, spoke eloquently about Kosoff’s work in a 2012 edition of Shutterbug Magazine. He said the following: “With his pristine compositions Kosoff has created an idealized world that sometimes strays into the allegorical, as in his image of three telephone poles titled ‘Three Crosses’ that may generate internal debate within the viewer. And then it hit me: Kosoff is a poet with a camera, rendering stanzas in grayscale using the rhythm of minimalistic images of pier pilings (‘Pier Pilings with Bird’) where you have to work to see the bird. It’s as if Kosoff wants to make his work accessible while at the same time not too accessible, holding back part of an image’s mystery for discovery and interpretation by the viewer.”

In a review in The Dallas Morning News,  Patricia Mora stated, “Brian Kosoff’s images in his show at AfterImage Gallery crackle with the voluptuousness of jewelry. He gives us vision after vision of night skies and planetary rotations coupled with sailing vessels, churches, highways and Southwestern landscapes. Because he photographs at night, he calculates directions, angles, exposure times and weather with the precision of a sailor navigating with an astrolabe.”

The latter review refers to Kosoff’s most recent work, landscape photography depicting night skies and images that include star trails and the stark contours of mountains, roads, telephone wire and train tracks.

Kosoff on his current work.

“What I’m currently working on is a series of landscapes at night. I started doing this after passing a cemetery in New Mexico that was at the base of a butte. Atop the butte were two crudely made crosses. The conditions at the time I encountered this scene were not of much interest so I took a compass reading to get a sense of the light and when it might be best to return to this location. I realized that this scene would be best captured from the South and facing North, so that the stars behind the crosses would appear to rotate directly behind the crosses. I liked this visual and the symbolism of the universe seeming to rotate around religion. I have a fascination with crosses, as they hold many different and powerful meanings. Their symbolism is immense.

But that was only the beginning of what I found to be a greater observation about scenes at night. I returned a few nights later when the conditions seemed ideal. I had to set up my view camera while the sun was still up so that I could frame and focus properly. I then had to wait many hours until the conditions were right. As I waited, and the stars appeared, clearer than I have ever seen them thanks to the high altitude and rural setting, I came to realize that during the day we live in a kind of bubble. Our perception is that we have a ‘roof’ over our heads.

During the day, when we look up and assume that we are seeing infinitely, we are not. Our own atmosphere, a bubble of gases and particles illuminated by the sun, blocks our view and, because of that our perception of the universe and our place in it is limited, we see no further than this ‘ceiling’ over our heads. During the day, it’s easy to feel that our significance is great because our reach and scope seems so much more local, our impact so much more powerful.

However, when one is out in the middle of nowhere, far away from cities and all one has for company is the howling of the coyotes and countless stars, the perception of our place in the universe becomes less significant. During the day, we are indoors, safe and sheltered, in control of our immediate environment. But at night, with the skies becoming transparent, we are truly outside and we realize that we’re at the whims of nature.

The apparent spin of the stars, of course, is interesting. We are actually the ones who are spinning and I feel this realization gives the stars a greater sense of life because they have movement. They are not just ‘dots in the sky’ but something with motion and, therefore, animation. Further, this provides a sense of time and the lack of permanence associated with that.

It has become so very clear to me that for all the assumptions about our significance, that our world is smaller than a grain of sand on the beach.”

Technical information and techniques

Kosoff shoots 120 B/W film, usually 6 x 12 cm, with either a Linhof Technika MT3000 and a Sinar zoom back or a Fotoman 612. He carries a Mamiya 7II as a back-up camera for grab shots. He prints on Ilford Multigrade.

He states that he “doesn’t believe in forcing a print, in continuously working on an image that’s just not heading in the right direction. I think that one’s emotional state is critical to the nature of one’s work; if a session is taking too long or becoming far too laborious, I go back to it another day.” Sometimes it takes years for Kosoff to “figure out” an image. He sees them differently after the passage of time and, in fact, sometimes “new images” were actually shot five years before they are shown. He continues to refine his processing and field methods, a process that continues to be ongoing.

Kosoff indicates that working as a commercial photographer has served him well. He states, “In that situation, failure is not an option. It requires doing one’s homework, being able to recognize problems before they occur and being able to handle anything that the project or situation throws at you.” He brings the same careful preparation to his landscape photography. Kosoff notes, “I often come across a scene with all the right compositional elements but not the right light or atmosphere. In that case, I take compass readings to determine ideally where I want the sun to be — then, using astronomical software, I determine what date and time when the sun will be in an optimum position and I return to the location then. I also take into consideration tides, moon position, foliage, weather, atmosphere, geography, agricultural cycles, etcetera.”

Quotes “I’ve often been asked, “Why shoot landscape in black-and-white instead of color?” For me the answer is simple: black-and-white is photography stripped down to its basic elements — light, tone, and composition. Color can be overpowering — especially since the introduction of super-saturated color films and the over-use of editing tools to crank the color saturation up to unnatural, even vulgar, levels.

Color can be a distraction in an image, one that overwhelms subtlety. I prefer a bit more of a slow exploration of an image rather then the slap-in-the-face that color can deliver. It’s more challenging to use black-and-white than color, and that you really need to have content and interest in the image that operates independently of color.”

"As B&W is already an interpretation of a scene, it is more prone to individual adjustment and manipulation of tones and contrast. In B&W there really isn't an‘accurate’ or ‘truthful’ rendering of the scene. So it lends itself to more personal and artistic interpretation. With color to a large extent you are locked into having some degree of fidelity to the original scene. You will not often find portraits where skin tones are intentionally purple, green leaves are red and skies are green. Color locks you in closer to reality and in that sense removes a large degree of manipulation and interpretation. And to me the art of photography comes not from merely capturing a scene, it's what you do with it. And B&W gives you more creative freedom."

“What most people don’t seem to get is that beauty can be a powerful tool, it’s a way for an artist to get others to appreciate what they appreciate, to seduce them into valuing what they value. If I take a picture of a common scene or object and make it beautiful, I have just transcended the perception that most people have of that scene or object. I’ve made them look at something in a different way and that means that I’ve changed their thinking. That’s no small thing.”

“And so goes Polaroid. Appreciated now that it's gone. Replaced by countless images that in the past would not have been worth the expense of a frame of film or a Polaroid print. Photography was once known for recording valued moments or expressing one's carefully considered vision. Now that has been replaced by a vast, even celebrated, documentation of the mundane.“

“ By nature, I’m a minimalist. I tend to like very bleak landscapes because they are composed of very simple shapes. The effect of light becomes obvious in that environment, because everything is boiled down to the most basic elements. Lighting became such a preoccupation during my career as a still life photographer these past 20 odd years, that it is hard to avoid seeking this quality of light in my landscape work as well.”

External Links “Transitioning from Advertising to Fine Arts” A three part series “Getting Gallery Representation, My Experience”

“Modern Pictorialism, Printing Techniques for Smooth Tonality”

“Bones, the Unity of Form and Function” Macmillan Publishing, 1994, all original photography by Brian Kosoff

Notes