Justin Cooper, Badwater Basin, Death Valley
The Artist

Justin Cooper

Ten years of walking toward weather. Waterfalls that can be heard a mile before they are seen, ridgelines that hold the last light long after the valley has given up on it, desert canyons that perhaps four hundred people will ever stand inside. Justin goes, and waits, and mostly comes home with nothing — which is the price of occasionally coming home with this.

Every photograph here is a limited edition, signed and numbered, finished by hand in the United States, and printed only when someone asks for it. When an edition closes, that view is finished — which is the whole of the promise, and the only one worth making.

Where I am right now → @destinationdaily_
Justin Cooper photographing from beneath Mesa Arch, Canyonlands
Mesa Arch, Canyonlands — waiting on the light under the span
The Artist

Ten years of going where the picture is.

Not where the road ends. Not where the viewing platform is. Where the picture is.

More than ten years of this now. Waterfalls you hear a mile before you see them. Peaks that keep the last of the light long after the valley has let go of it. Desert canyons that a few hundred people will ever stand inside, and which do not care one way or the other whether anyone does.

The work is made to be printed large, and that is not a preference — it is the whole argument. A photograph that looks pretty on a phone is a different object at seven feet across, lit properly, on a wall you pass four times a day for twenty years. On the phone you look at it. At seven feet it looks back.

  • Go where the picture is, not where the road endsMost of these cost days of walking, or waiting, or coming back a second and a third year to find the same light in a better mood.
  • Never photograph the same thing twiceNothing here is a variation on anything else here. When an edition closes, that view is done, and I go and find another one.
  • Print it properly or do not print itMade by the lab that invented the process, on materials chosen for one quality above all others: how honestly they hold a black.
Follow the Journey →

Destination Daily — the truck, the route, and where the pictures come from

From the feed

@destinationdaily_

Contact

Tell me about the wall.

A piece you keep coming back to. A size you cannot settle. A commission. A room that has defeated you twice already. These reach me, and I am the one who answers them.

This lands in Justin@theartoftravels.net, and is usually answered inside two working days.

Currently travelling

I am frequently somewhere with no signal at all. If a reply takes a few days, that is nearly always the reason — not that your letter went unread.