The Photographer

Native New Mexican and fine art photographer Robert Medina Cook began his journey in the creative arts over thirty years ago in Santa Fe, New Mexico. During that time he walked many paths...custom furniture maker, fishing guide, folk artist, writer, musician. In the early eighties, he moved to the wild expanse of Glorieta Mesa southeast of Santa Fe, where he built his house and shop by hand, grew most of his food, and powered the homestead with wind and solar power. The intimate experience would prove to be profoundly influential years later, when Robert picked up his first camera and discovered a new calling–one that persuaded him to exchange his carving chisels for lenses, his handsaws for a tripod.

With camera in hand, a new found "sense of place and purpose", and a passionate thirst for "seeing" and learning, he embarked on the journey of a fulltime fine art photographer. His prior experience as a furniture maker gave him an innate sense of line, shape, and perspective. His fishing guide and homesteading experiences, especially the skills of living in harmony with the land, gently shaped his "way of seeing" and gave him a powerful understanding of nature and the flow of life.

As his "Vision" became more defined- a unique expressionistic style collector's tend to label today as "Spiritual", Mystical", and at times "Iconic"- Robert's works quickly began to find their way into galleries throughout New Mexico, and eventually into numerous private and corporate collections worldwide. Almost two years to the day he first picked up a camera, his work was featured in the February 2007 edition of New Mexico Magazine in a feature article entitled "The Ethereal Eye of Robert Medina Cook", and additional articles, accomplishments, and exhibition awards have since followed.

Guided by a powerful sense of "calling" and exploration, Robert has lived in and experienced a vast part of New Mexico- from Silver City to Santa Fe, Tucumcari to Taos- drawing upon his ancestral roots, and garnering new found inspiration and a deeper appreciation of his native homeland along the way.

Whether the subject is an Elder or buffalo, ruin or dwelling, Robert's approach is one he refers to as "the Sacred Three": Respect for the essence and uniqueness of the subject, appreciation for being granted the opportunity to be in its presence, and gratitude for the freedom to celebrate and share the beauty and mysticism of his enchanted, ancient homeland... thru words and imagery.

Artist Statement

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
-Albert Einstein

Although well traveled throughout the United States, my heart, vision, and camera is centered in my ancestral homeland of New Mexico. Most often, the intention is to celebrate, rather than document, a subject and its surrounding environment. I constantly seek the sacred in the ordinary…minimizing color to a basic form, drawing on texture, light, and shadow, all in the hope the subtext of the image will appear quietly in a meaningful, sometimes transcendental way. Believing each image to be a gift, a collaboration between myself, Spirit, the subject, and the final image, I personally complete the process from capture to print. It is when this collaboration ends that the image’s true journey begins…and is allowed to tell its own story…in its own unique way.

-Robert Medina Cook