Kevin Cooley

All photography by nature is about time. Whether it be the blink of an eye frozen by the shutter or, in the case of my new series, long periods of time condensed into a single frame. In the course of this series, I present dozens of minutes or even hours within a single image that captures the paths of commercial airplanes traversing our night skies. The streaks of landing and navigation lights, the only aspects of the planes visible in the images, become metaphors for longing and escape, transition and reunion, interconnectivity and, of course, the intense compression of time that the availability of commercial air travel brings us.

I work to create something beautiful from the otherwise hectic airport environments; a sense of grace, solitude and a quiet peacefulness. Gone are the long lines and anxieties as my images visually reduce the airports to the natural environment surrounding them. Perhaps a lone control tower glows behind a bank of trees or the bright airport lights cast mysterious reflections that swirl softly in waterways at a runway’s end. Gone are the loud sounds of jet engines and even the sight of the giant airplanes themselves. A lone streak soars over a small house or, at times, hundreds of plane trails glide their way over a cluster of apartment dwellings.

Continuing a personal theme in my photography, I strive to present my conflicted vision of urbanity as both beautiful and disturbing. These busy, stressful airports leave a graceful aerial mark over family neighborhoods and marginal landscapes. This imagery plays with perception and the illumination of everyday life in a fashion that is impossible to see with the naked eye.