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Grim Street | 
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| Creators: Mark Cohen, Anne Wilkes Tucker, Thomas Southall
Publisher: powerHouse Books
Category: Book
List Price: $45.00
Buy New: $21.45
You Save: $23.55 (52%)
New (9) Used (8) Collectible (1) from $21.45
Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 453414
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 142
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.8
Dimensions (in): 12.1 x 9.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 1576872300
Dewey Decimal Number: 779.9974832
EAN: 9781576872307
ASIN: 1576872300
Publication Date: February 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Brand new!
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| Customer Reviews:
Grim Street January 15, 2008
True Color
I, a son of Wilkes-Barre, spent weekends with my father and grandfather in the Heights Section of this fabled coal-town. Though, my time there came years after Cohen's published street work, I can still relate to those dusty images, a virtual urban playground for little boys. Tackle football in the backyards, bordered by massive, dilapidated fences; the distinct, sharp smell of cigarettes in the hands of kids no older than 13; boarded windows, with peep-holes just my height. The alleys I walked never struck me as eerie, they were the norm, they were Wilkes-Barre and to some degree the same is true today. Cohen's unique visual-ethnographic study of urban banality, makes beautiful the unusual and awkward character of Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Grim Street Revisited November 21, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I lived on Grim Street . In the mid 1970's I lived in the Heights Section of Wilkes-Barre Pa where Mr Cohen did many of the photos in this fine collection. He was a quiet fixture on those streets on a late Sunday afternoon. One would see the tall lanky stranger in his army fatigue jacket and horn rimmed glasses walking along those streets occassionally stopping to quickly photograph a stray dog or an unwashed child along the sidewalk. There was almost a random approach to his subjects but he would bend and sometimes stoop as he would click off 4 or 5 quick "snaps" of his subject and then be off after his next subject. I was in my early 20's at the time and curious as to how anyone could find interest in those mundane often grimy if not grim scenes in that neighborhood. I now have the answer over 30 years later. This fascinating collection evokes a time and place that could represent any of our inner city neighborhoods. The black and white of the pictures captures the mood and feel of the subjects. I recommend this volume as a must have for any serious student of photography or urban life over the past century.
'Grabshots' Illuminate the Grim Streets of Wilkes-Barre, PA August 25, 2005
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Mark Cohen is a restless poet of a photographer. In GRIM STREET he demonstrates his enormous ability to grasp a winking moment of life in the back streets, isolated fleeting views of the ordinary made extraordinary. This very fine book of photographs is less attuned to compositionally correct images as emotionally charged ones. As such it is a monograph of the smarmy, dark, seedy and at times embarrassingly immediate life of the underbelly of America as represented by the streets of Wilkes-Barre, PA.
Cohen's successful forays in to this territory are accompanied by 'interviews' conducted by Anne Wilkes Tucker and Thomas Southall. The composite result is a book that 'reads' like a novel and will remain compelling present in the mind's eye long after perusing it. Fine work! Grady Harp, August 05
Grim Street February 11, 2005
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
"A lot of it is mood driven, but I don't exactly know where the motive and inspiration to take pictures comes from. So it's very spontaneous work; there's not a lot really to plan." So it would seem at first glance upon Mark Cohen's masterful collection of work presented in his first (and hopefully not last) book Grim Street . From this revealing quote by the author, we are lead to believe that Cohen himself discovers in his darkroom much of the beauty portrayed in his work.
As anyone who has followed Cohen's work knows, Mark has been influenced greatly by the renowned street photographer Cartier-Bresson with his ability to capture the unfolding "decisive moment." But Cohen's work is anything but unfolding, on the contrary; it is literally in-your-face obtrusive, grabbing on film fleeting sublime moments, otherwise lost forever in eternity. One can almost amusingly imagine Cohen, armed with his trade mark flash and wide angle lens, scurrying around a photo-opportunity with Bresson. While Bresson contemplates from a distance the "decisive moment" to release the shutter; Cohen (in his own words) uses "grab shots" often without even the use of a viewfinder to capture what could be called "multiple moments." It is apparent from this exquisite body of work that Mark Cohen is the heir apparent to the recently deceased Bresson, and, one might say, an "impatient" 21st Century updated version of the master.
Ignoring for a moment the obvious psychological and sociological content of Cohen's work, the visual subject matter of Grim Street is indeed at first glance difficult to digest. It is anything but "cheery", often times seedy, sometimes voyeuristic, and occasionally downright lascivious. But the ultimate irony is that these qualities of course are passing and superficial, as fleeting as Cohen's flick of the shutter. For it's only with pausing and contemplating the work that the disquieting subject matter "disappears" and the true mastery reappears. That perfect wisp of hair, that "just so" turn of a cat's tail, that flawlessly lit foreground and carefully nuanced background, those repeating diagonals inside exquisite compositions, and all the artistic universals that forever have withstood the test of time, are there to be discovered in this collection.
May this reviewer be so bold as to suggest an answer to Mr. Cohen's own query about the source of his inspiration referred to earlier? A grim street is down-and-dirty, mean and often times dangerous. Surely there is no inspiration to be found in such a secular reality, unless one has the genius and magical gift to capture a transcendent glimpse of a more perfect place. The source of that gift, the inspiration is not temporal. Undoubtedly we're all traveling on a type of "grim street." Thank God we have inspired and graced artists such as Mark Cohen to give us an occasional glance at our idyllic destination.
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