Image: Museum of Modern Art, New York
Washington, DC–based photographer and Howard University faculty member Larry W. Cook is the subject of a new MoMA Magazine conversation examining community, grief, memory and the role of play in artistic practice. Published August 31, the profile places Cook’s photographic work within a broader discussion of how artists use experimentation, personal archives and everyday experience to approach emotionally difficult material.
Cook is an associate professor and Photography Area Coordinator at Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts. The College describes its faculty as nationally and internationally recognized artists, scholars and practitioners, and maintains a public record of selected research and creative work. Cook’s profile extends that institutional context through a detailed account of the experiences and archival histories informing his practice.
In the interview, Cook traces his interest in photography to childhood. He recalls using disposable cameras in middle school to photograph family members and friends, then bringing the images to school and adding photographs others gave him. That early album became both a record of his community and an introduction to the significance of building an archive.
Nostalgia remains central to Cook’s work, including his series ‘The Visiting Room’. The project developed after he encountered a scrapbook belonging to his late uncle, containing photographs from prison visiting rooms, magazine clippings and letters. Cook uses manipulation and collage to create distance from the material while continuing to engage with family loss and the histories held in the images.
Cook told the magazine that making ‘The Visiting Room’ helped him channel grief connected to family members who had been incarcerated. He said the work did not resolve that grief, but created a space in which he could revisit it, learn more about his uncles and pay tribute to their influence on his life and practice. He also discussed ‘When Dad Comes Home’, a series incorporating letters and photographs connected to his late uncle, including a presentation of the work during Howard’s Porter Colloquium that became intensely emotional as he read one of the letters aloud.
The profile presents play not as a departure from this subject matter but as part of Cook’s method. He describes working with rhinestones, glitter, paint and photographic images, and says that experimentation gives him a way to approach painful experiences without confronting their emotional weight all at once. Sequencing photographs, moving images around and inviting artists and others to respond are also collaborative and playful stages of his process.
Cook’s connection to the Washington metropolitan area—referred to in the interview as the DMV, encompassing DC, Maryland and Virginia—runs through his understanding of representation. His early photography included go-go events, family reunions, cookouts, proms and cabarets, where he learned both the mechanics of photography and how people wanted to see themselves represented. He describes the work as a love letter to the DMV. Alongside his studio practice, he has developed ‘Wherever There Is Light’, an initiative working with photographers who were formerly incarcerated.
