Christopher Cole earned a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, where he studied photography under Joel Sternfeld, and an M.Sc. in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics. A specialist in the Anthropology of Development and Globalization, he has over the past four years worked as a teacher in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, volunteered with the United Nations in Afghanistan, and worked on a ranch in Hawaii.
Throughout his oeuvre, Cole has photographed exclusively in the 8x10 inch film format, intent on making richly detailed prints. His unique vantage points – whether in the slums of Kabul or atop ten thousand foot volcanoes in the Pacific –inspire a coolly detached perspective on the planet and its inhabitants. This combination suffuses Cole’s photographs, many of which are more than six feet high and nine feet long, with a sense of the sublime, even as his subject matter, as with much of his recent work, ranges into the darker effects of contemporary globalization.
From afar, Cole’s urban landscapes – taken over a five-year period in Afghanistan, China, Egypt, Nepal and Turkey – are ordered and pleasing to the eye. On closer inspection, the larger format reveals vibrant details. In his view from “TV Hill” in Kabul, Afghanistan, anonymous squatters seem to emerge from each of the hovels in a slum that might at first appear to be deserted.
The soft colour and pleasing aesthetic of the images belie a time-consuming and often hazardous process. Cole has been detained by local security officials and forced to use unorthodox tactics such as smuggling film out of Afghanistan by taping it to his torso. Each location presents its own challenges.
Employing the 8x10 format in extreme locales, Cole has fine-tuned the process. Once only the realm of fair weather photography, he has brought this format through most unusual conditions – able to set, capture, and deconstruct in the face of inclement weather, police harassment and would-be thieves. However, for each image that survives, another will fail from exposure to the elements or irradiation.
