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Landscapes Of Light (By Robert Cooper)
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Pictures With A Meaning
 | The designers of this website gratefully acknowledge that text and photographs from the book are reproduced here by kind permission of SPCK and may not be reproduced in any form without the permission of the publisher.
Anyone wishing to reproduce the pictures to contact R.Cooper,this can be done by clicking through the link below
Landscapes of Light (ISBN 0-281-05320-0) is published by SPCK and costs £7.99. It is available from all good bookshops.
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Landscapes of Light features prayers by David Adam, Vicar of Holy Island and photographs by Robert Cooper, priest-in-charge of Sadberge and a chaplain to the Arts and Recreation. As the text on the cover explains:
“This imaginatively designed anthology combines some of David’s most popular prayers with stunning photographs of Holy Island. Here you will find wide-sweep landscapes and more intricate images that reveal beauty in unexpected places. Each photograph relates closely to the meaning and mood of the accompanying prayer. Though firmly rooted in daily living, Landscapes of Light, aims to help us perceive the glory of God that is always around us – both in times of struggle and times of joy.”
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TO ETERNITY
Where does the journey end?
Beyond where you can see.
Where do the years end?
That’s unknown to you and me
Where does life end?
In love and eternity |
VISION
O Lord
Extend our vision
Our clearness of sight
Open our eyes to see
Beyond the obvious
To perceive that this is your world
You are in it
You invade it
Your pervade it
You enfold it
It is immersed in you
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OPENINGS
O Lord God, Creator of all
Open my eyes to beauty
Open my eyes to wonder
Open my ears to others
Open my heart to you
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THE GATE OF GLORY
 Lord,
When our steps are weary
And the going is rough
When our life is dreary
And our journey is tough
Open the gate of glory
Lord,
When the dark clouds thicken
And the storm rides high
When the troubles quicken
And danger is nigh
Open the gate of glory
Lord,
When our work is completed
And the battle is done
We are not defeated
The victory you have won
Open the gate of glory
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Strengthening Faith (Through Photography )
 | In Landscapes of Light, Robert Cooper writes about his approach to photography.
SEEING IN A NEW LIGHT
Light is the photographer’s medium. It is also a metaphor of revelation — we speak of illumination and enlightenment.
When T. S. Eliot described light as ‘investing form with lucid stillness/Turning shadow into transient beauty’1 he was writing as a photographer sees. The photographer’s awareness is tuned constantly to changes in the angle, direction, colour and intensity of light.
Compared with painting, this momentary art - measured in the clicking shutter’s hundredths, even thousandths of a second - is sometimes seen as shallow. Ironically, the camera, which proverbially never lies, is deemed unable to enlighten - to tell the deepest truth. Yet this is to misunderstand the process.
Its very transience is an advantage, because it leads to an intense awareness of the present moment and of the value of passing things.
Of all the images in this book, the one that best expresses my own vision is of the kelp. Normally, it just floats there, dull and flabby, but against the sun’s rays it shines gold.
It is transfigured - as are people when they are seen through the lens of God’s mercy and love, with all their potential and infinite possibilities. Just as in nature, despite all that has been done to pollute it, there remains the ‘dearest freshness deep down things’2 so there is a beauty to be discovered in people once the layers of our prejudice and false perception are peeled away.
Photography can transfigure people and things by revealing them ‘in a new light’.
Through the lens all things potentially become a source of wonder.
All things - even when they are not obviously beautiful.
Much of Holy Island, where these pictures were taken, is bare and uninviting.
When the wind blows - and it often does - it can cut to the bone, For all the ravishing beauty of the dawn and the bewitching sparkle of the surrounding sea, being on the island is not always a cosy experience.
Yet God is as present in the mists of uncertainty, the chill winds of suffering, the apparently insignificant or the cast aside, as in the glory of the dawn.
It is this conviction that these photographs attempt to share.
1. T.S. Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’, in Four Quartets, Faber and Faber, 1944, lines 93-4, p. 17.
2. Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘God’s Grandeur’, in Poems and Prose, Harmondsworth Penguin, 1953, p.27 |
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