John Cohen

In the summer of 1955 a relatively naive and uninformed John Cohen crossed the straits of Gibraltar. He arrived in Tangier with a handwritten note in cursive Arabic

John Cohen, born in 1932 in New York, is a photographer, filmmaker and founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers. A masters graduate of Yale University, Cohen participated in the artistic circles of late 1950s and early ’60s New York, and photographed Robert Frank’s film Pull My Daisy (1959). He has made numerous books and films, and produced recordings of traditional American musicians including Dillard Chandler and Roscoe Holcomb. The Library of Congress has acquired his archive. Cohen’s books with Steidl include Past Present Peru (2010), The High and Lonesome Sound (2012) and Cheap rents ... and de Kooning (2016).