Vedas is an ongoing pursuit in the understanding of knowledge from a Copernican perspective by LA-based photographer Nicholas Alan Cope and art-director Dustin Edward Arnold. It isn’t often you come across a portfolio of work so vast whilst remaining profoundly important, you need to see this.
It isn’t often you come across a portfolio of work as vast as it is profoundly important. LA-based photographer Nicholas Alan Cope happens to own such a portfolio, and certainly one that is too large to represent here in blog format, so i’m going to focus only on his latest project, and, from what i can make out, his fourth with art director Dustin Edward Arnold.
Also based in LA, Dustin works with sculpture and product development – his hand is clearly seen in the projects these two have produced together, and provides an amazing sense of gravitas to the scenes Nicholas shoots.
Their current project; Vedas, is an ongoing pursuit in the understanding of knowledge from a Copernican perspective. Knowledge as an exchange of values, a beam of light that enters a room, illuminating some areas and leaving others in shadow.
Cope and Arnold are interested in veils and unveiling; they’re searching for the point where the object ceases to become material and instead become meaningful, the point of interpretation, perhaps where the objective and the subjective split and part company.
From their site:
“Whether working commercially, with a magazine, or with an exhibition there are agendas to be fulfilled outside the creators intent, sometimes so many that the touch of the author even disappears completely. Anyone who has functioned within the creative industry has experienced this to a greater or lesser degree. Our collaboration was born out of the desire to break this pattern. To better understand ourselves, and connect with the world around us with the least amount of compromise possible.
As a rule, it seems we never get things exactly the way we want. One part of wisdom is realising this, one part of passion is going on anyway.”
Nicholas Alan Cope and Dustin Edward Arnold. Truly, completely, inspiring work.
