Debbie Adele Cooper
Artist, Curator, Practitioner
Prison Cyanotypes
Unseen and Unheard Things: Dartmoor Prison Artist residency
Fragility of Memory
W W Winter Photographers Artist Residency
Mass Participation, Mapping Derby
Daily Commutes
Object and Loss
Digital Artist Training
Category: Recent Work
Analogue Photography Workshops Recent Work Uncategorized
Glass Plate Photography
I regularly run Dry Plate workshops at Streetlevel Photoworks in Glasgow. The weekend workshop covers how to cut and prepare the glass, and then coat with light-sensitive emulsion. Learning how to cut the glass means participants can make plates to fit any size camera, I use 5×4 for the workshop.
The course also covers shooting with large format cameras and paper negatives, so much cheaper than film, and a great way to test for exposure prior to shooting on plate.
Large format paper negatives drying
Next course will be in May 2018 at Streetlevel Photoworks in Glasgow, booking via this link.
Courses coming in London soon, watch this space.
Bespoke workshops available, contact me on: info [at] debbiecooper.org to discuss
Workshop participant with dry plate made in class, Debbie Adele Cooper glass plate photography workshops
Participant holding homemade Glass Plate workshop led by Debbie Adele Cooper
Participant experimenting with large format camera, Glass Plate workshops by Debbie Adele Cooper
Read more about the history of the Dry Plate process on Wikipedia
Archive Artist Residency Recent Work Sound art Uncategorized
Reading in cell, Dartmoor Prison, 2016
Prisoner in a cell at Dartmoor reading from a WWI Conscientious Objector diary. The diaries cannot be taken out of the archive, copies were made for the prisoners to read and record audio from.
Image printed on Japanese washi paper, coated in wax and resin.
View from a prisoners' cell over the moors, Dartmoor Prison, 2016
Window view from a prison cell. A few of the prisoners have a view onto the moor, the windows are very high in the rooms and I often had to stand on prisoners beds to photograph the window.
Exercise Yard, Dartmoor Prison, 2016
Photograph of Dartmoor prison exercise yard.
Home, Dartmoor Prison, 2016
Photograph of a cell at Dartmoor prison. Many of the prisoners try to create a sense of home in their cell, this prisoner has built a plate rack using matchsticks and glue, and a cardboard box to hold cutlery.
Rose, Dartmoor Prison, 2016
Prisoners were asked to share something they were proud of, this prisoner showed a rose he had carved out of stale bread and then painted.
Each of the photographs above was exhibited with audio recordings from the serving prisoners. I have permissions to share those in an exhibition setting but not online.
I also made cyanotypes in prisoners cells during this residency, click here to see these.
During 2016-17, I was artist-in-residence at Dartmoor Prison, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and B-Side Festival. My residency has been based around the Prison archive, focusing WWI Conscientious Objector stories.
The title of this project is taken from a Dartmoor Prison diary written by a Conscientious Objector during the Great War.
Between 1917-1919 Dartmoor Prison housed over 1100 Conscientious Objectors (C.O.s); men who refused to fight in the war upon grounds of conscience. I have been researching letters and diaries written by C.O.s who served time in Dartmoor Prison and sharing these writings with current inmates of Dartmoor Prison. Together with the prisoners and staff at Dartmoor Prison, I have been exploring a cultural history of incarceration, what it means to be excluded and ostracised from society.
When I was first invited to be artist-in-residence at Dartmoor Prison I expected to find the place (and people) aggressive and harsh. Instead, I found staff that were welcoming and supportive, and the prisoners who volunteered to work on the project shared a genuine interest in the story of the Conscientious Objectors who were in their cells 100 years ago.
During the project, I discovered diaries from WWI Conscientious Objectors. I read these diaries to prisoners, and from those initial readings, the prisoners have been able to learn, empathise, and for some, to be proud of those men who were in Dartmoor Prison from 1916-1919.
While the environment of the prison is harsh with bars, locks, and barbed wire, the support of the staff during this project has been very gratifying. It was an incredible privilege to work with the staff of the prison and museum as well as the rich archive material. And whilst many of the prisoners at first came across as 'tough' I found a vulnerability when they spoke about their experience of incarceration through the guise of discussing the diaries and experiences of the Conscientious Objectors 100 years ago. I have tried to share that experience in the work by contrasting the bars and barbed wire with the soft pastels of summer light coming in through the windows. The Dartmoor Prison photographs are printed on Japanese washi paper and then coated in wax and resin to create a fragility and an opacity which shares my feeling of working in the prison; where some things are clear and understood whereas other things are hidden and obscure, and a fragility within the physicality of the work which aims to reflect the vulnerability of the inmates, now and historic.
During the development of this project, I also made a series of cyanotypes click here to read about these.
This project was organised by B-Side Festival in Portland
Funded by The Heritage Lottery Fund
Archive Participation Recent Work
Fragility of Memory, Buxton Museum 2015. Wax houses built of archive photographs, containing iBeacons playing oral history and music
Each wax house featured photos and oral history from a different town in England.
Wax and resin houses, incorporating archival images from different midlands towns. Each house enclosed an iBeacon which played oral history and music gathered or created through Past Lives Project a cine film, sound, music and photo archive project in the Midlands.
Using an iPad and headphones exhibition visitors walk in between the sculptures, the iBeacons inside the sculptures interacting with visitors through the route they take around work and the time they spend with each sculpture, creating a soundscape bespoke to each person.
This artwork was commissioned by D-Lab project, set up to enable Derbyshire artists to use new technologies in their work.
The iBeacon work was made in collaboration with Locly
Archive Artist Residency Recent Work
If on a Winter's Night… FORMAT International Photography Festival 2015
Artist Residency at W W Winter Photography Ltd the longest running photography studio in the UK.
W W Winter Photography Ltd c1900
In 2013 I created a self-initiated artist residency at WW Winter Photography Ltd, working with and making responses from their glass plate collection. This residency was funded by Arts Council England and Derby City Council.
Throughout WW Winter Photography's long history they have explored and innovated in every form of photography, from ambrotypes to gas light enlargers, dry plate to digital and everything in between.
As part of my residency I learnt how to make and shoot on glass; a process from the 1860s which is now almost lost. Shooting on glass has since become a core part of my practice and I now teach this process in darkrooms across the country.
During my residency I wrote a successful bid to Heritage Lottery Fund for over £50,000 to start an archiving project in an aim to preserve and protect the photographic collection.
Glass plate negative from WW Winter Collection
On my very first visit to Winter's I was told of a story that during World War II there was a glass shortage, and as part of the 'Dig For Victory' campaign W W Winter Photography gave many of their large glass plate negatives to the Derby public to be made into greenhouses. This story of the Derby public gardening and growing fruit and veg under negative portraits was captivating, the image of negative greenhouses across the city was an enchanting one, and one that had to be re-made.
Greenhouse made from WW Winter negatives interior
If On A Winter's Night… FORMAT Festival 2015
The images used to make the greenhouse are from negatives discovered behind a false wall at W W Winter's, it seemed fitting to use these beautifully decayed images to echo the negatives that are now missing from their archive due to being given away to be made into greenhouses.
The exhibition which was recently exhibited at FORMAT International Photography in March 2015, brings together two visual stories of the Winter's archive. The negative greenhouse and the second story Derby Anon is one of the tens of thousands of unprovenanced glass plate portraits held at Winter's. I invited people who share a physical resemblance to a Winter's portrait to be photographed against the same backdrop, in the same studio, on glass, just as the original portrait was taken.
Left, new image shot on glass by Debbie Adele Cooper. Right, WW Winter image c1890s. Both photographs were shot on glass in the same studio over 100 years apart.
Left, new portrait shot on glass plate by Debbie Adele Cooper. Right WW Winter Photography image from 1940s. Both photographs were shot on glass in the same studio, using the same backdrop more than 70 years apart.
glass plate negative and inverted image, glass plate hand coated and shot by Debbie Adele Cooper.
Debbie Adele Cooper shooting large format glass plates portraits in the W W Winter Studio using the same backdrop that the originals plates were photographed against
By pairing people through time, we draw a little closer to the original portrait sitter, seeing through the aesthetic of a different era to the person they might once have been.
W W Winter Blogspot http://wwwinterltd.blogspot.co.uk/
Press reviews of this project
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/11464857/Forgotten-Victorian-photos-reveal-another-era.html
http://vision.xitek.com/gallery/201504/02-175589_2.html
http://www.worldphoto.org/community/blogs/format-international-photo-festival/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/11476911/A-tour-of-FORMAT-photography-festival.html?frame=3234856
http://www.nineelmsphotography.com/blog/?p=1967
http://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/Bygones-Glass-plate-collection-provides-unique/story-26211058-detail/story.html
http://www.lun.com/LunMobileIphone//Pages/NewsDetailMobile.aspx?dt=2015-04-19&PaginaId=34&SupplementId=0&bodyid=0&IsNPHR=0
https://slpresearch.wordpress.com/
Update: In June 2016, I raised £40,000 from Heritage Lottery Fund, with supporting funding from FORMAT International Photography Festival and Derby Museums and Art Gallery to show a retrospective of W W Winter Ltd during FORMAT 17, the work will be on show in Derby Museums & Art Gallery from 23rd March 2017.
Participation Recent Work
Mapping Derby was a project I created for FORMAT International Photography Festival.
FORMAT Festival and QUAD have a strong background in Mass Participation and each festival they run many international and local mass participation projects working with artists and creatives from around the world to deliver these.
Mapping Derby started with the question: How do you engage a photography hungry audience?
The project aimed to engage the photographer (professional and amateur) while still engaging schools, local residents and day visitors. A project that can reach out to everyone, and offer multiple engagement opportunities.
Inspired from a mapping project I worked on for Buxton Museum, and with input from FORMAT's Curator Louise Clements, I created up Mapping Derby. A simple premise, residents and visitors to Derby were given the challenge of photo-mapping the city. Anywhere that captured their eye, inspired them, held memories, meaning, the city was their canvas.
In an empty shop-come-gallery a public photography exhibition grew day by day, as participants dropped in with their cameras and mobile phones to share their photographs with FORMAT and the city. What made the project engaging and unique was the room-sized Derby map which filled 3 walls of the exhibition space. Using instant photo printers, participants came into the space, printed their photo, attached it to a luggage tag, added text and location to the reverse and then physically nailed it to the wall.
Participants loved the low-tech-meets-high-tech, retrotech affair. The project ran for 2 months, regular participants started dropping in early in the morning to find empty spaces on the map, setting themselves a challenge to fill the gaps in as many creative ways as possible.
To engage the widest possible audience we had a bespoke web application created by 83AV where participants could upload and geotag their photos online.
The project was extremely successful, with over 1000 photographs submitted online and in person, we ran photography workshops and walks from the popup gallery space. Reaching out to a wide audience of participants.
Following on from that, we were invited to run a bespoke version of the project for Rufford Gallery, called Mapping Nottinghamshire. Rufford chose not to go for a web application for the project. This led us down an interesting line of research into free online engagement tools, we discovered that tumblr offer shared tumblogs which are offer great potential and adaptability for online participation.
The project has been re-written and run again at FORMAT called 'Derby at Work' to work with the festival theme of Factory. Visitors and city residents were invited to photograph the working day in all its guises, everything from doing your homework, walking the dog, sitting in the office, commuting to work and everything in between… how do we categorise work in ours and others lives?? This ran from the Chocolate Factory venue with Brendan Oliver from Floating Point Digital writing the web application for the project. Click on the link to Floating Point Digital's site for Brendan's version of the project
I've since gone on to re-run this project at TATE Britain, working with young people to map their #OffTheGrid spaces, the un-mapped spaces in their lives. How do we categorise the spaces in our lives? The places we go to to see friends, to be alone, to create, to think…? Working with TATE Collective we mapped the unmappable tracing the spaces that we know and hold personal meaning.
I'm currently working with First Art to develop Mapping for their people and places project, which is very exciting as I just love running this project, watch this space for developments.
Daily Commutes project was exhibited at FORMAT International Photography Festival 2013
Daily Commutes project was exhibited at Vibe Gallery in 2012 as part of the Desperate Artwives exhibition in partnership with Women's Art Library London.
Guardian Review
The project started as a way to keep making art in what had become a really busy period in my life. I photographed my commute each day, tracked the GPS data and created a string map of my journey and time. After a successful exhibition in London, the project evolved to include 3 other international artists who document their commutes and was shown at FORMAT International Photography Festival in 2013. Their individual journeys were GPS tracked and the string lines and photo times of their images are woven together to create one piece, reflecting our fleeting online interactions, which for artists and creatives can be collaborative and inspiring.
This project is still growing and open to new artists, we're looking for bodies of work with an individual style. If you would like to take part leave a message below.
The exhibition photographs above were shot by Holly Booth, an amazing photographer who specialises in product and fashion photography, see her review of the exhibition and contact detils in the link below
http://www.hollybooth.com/blog/2013/4/14/daily-commutes-format13