About

Donna Cooper is a photographer and interdisciplinary artist living and working on her family’s farm along the Roanoke River in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Photography is at the center of her practice, which also extends through performance, drawing, and sculpture.

Her current work brings fire, water, the body, and land into a relational process. Through tending fire, gathering materials, making long-exposure performances, and working with ash and charcoal, Cooper approaches the elements not as subjects or spectacle, but as collaborators. The work considers cycles of destruction and regeneration and the ways place shapes both memory and self. It emerges through cycles of attention, response, and revision.

Cooper holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at the Chicago Cultural Center, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Mint Museum, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She is currently developing Where Fire Leads Me as a photobook.