By
Maggie Burnett
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Exhibit of couples by nationally renowned photographer now at CCP
For many, relationships might pose a threat, a happy addition and generally, a major life change.
For portrait photographer Mariana Cook, relationships just pose.
"Couples: Speaking from the Heart," an exhibit by the nationally acclaimed Cook, contain portraits taken of both famous and everyday couples that explore the single identity formed by individuals who have committed their lives to each other.
"(I was) very curious to explore the variety of possible couple relationships," she said. "Marriage isn't the same for any two people."
Cook said she felt no inhibition in crossing sexual boundaries in her work - she photographed both heterosexual and homosexual relationships.
The exhibit, now showing at the Center for Creative Photography, is the last in a series of four relationship-themed bodies of work that Cook has published and exhibited in galleries across the nation.
Soon to be entering her 30th year of photography, Cook said she has always had a fondness for photography and even had the fortune of studying under popular photographer Ansel Adams for six years after she graduated from Columbia University.
"When I graduated from college, I had to ask myself what I could do and so I concentrated and worked hard on that," she said.
She emphasized that her photographs are not meant to tell a story. Rather, she said, she was interested in the emotional makeup of the people she photographed, and that she desires to bring those feelings out through the body language displayed in the pictures.
"I come to the people without knowing anything (about them)," she said. "Whatever gift I have is purely intuitive. It's the opposite of what gets done in a magazine, where often pictures are meant to illustrate."
In addition to Cook's convictions about her work, she described her photographing techniques as a very personal and emotional experience.
"I don't try to engage them, I just tell them to look at the camera," she said. "I ask them to dress simplisticly."
She added that she is "not a fashion photographer," typically asking her subjects to dress in a muted manner so as not to take away from the emotion of the piece.
"I want the clothes to disappear," she said. "I tend to ask people to wear clothes on the darker side. I don't like distractions."
The portraits displayed in the "Couples" exhibit were taken throughout the past seven years. Three other exhibitions relating to human relationships, "Fathers and Daughters," "Mothers and Sons" and "Generations of Women," preceded "Couples."
"One reason (I chose this idea) was that I have a family. It's easier to arrange sessions because couples live together. It was a practical concern," she said.
A parent herself, Cook said the "Fathers and Daughters" body of work was inspired by the close relationship she had with her own father, making the work very personal.
Each photo in the exhibit is accompanied by a short, first-person narrative which is authored by one or both of the people featured in that particular photograph.
Cook said she interviewed each person separately about the other person in the relationship to get them to speak openly about each other.
"A lot of the project was editing text," she said.
Although Cook is largely famous for her work as a portrait photographer, her latest endeavor has been to take one photograph a day depicting no particular person or event.
"I may continue making one picture a day for the rest of my life. That's not a bad idea, in fact," she said. "It directs an evolution, kind of like a way of marking yourself."
