FEARLESS BEAUTY 1
RICHARD ALAN COHEN PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE MAKER “I create photographic images to highlight my reverential relationship with the environment through which I walk daily. I take natural details like streams, waterfalls, tree stumps and plants, and put them into a new context to build conceptual landscapes. I try to make my images provide a larger perspective that emphasizes the importance of climate change to even the smallest niches within nature. I often give my images an otherworldly appearance to impart distance from the ordinary reality in which these spaces are threatened by global warming and to pay them respect as places of beauty.” Interview by Harryet Candee Harryet Candee: While you were actively involved in your biomedical research career of 40 years, what over the course of time did you find to be most interesting and challenging? Richard Alan Cohen: Science, like art, is all about ideas. There were the challenges of working in teams of students, technicians, and colleagues, of convincing piers that the work was good enough to put federal grant dollars into it, and of the long hours required to bring an idea to fruition. But, it was the development of the concepts which drove the work, to be sure they were solid and worthy, that was the most difficult and the most rewarding. Can you explain some key points regarding the research, goals and challenges you did over those years? RAC: Soon after I began in vascular research the discovery was made that the lining cells of blood vessels was key to their normal function. I took 14 • MAY 2023 THE ARTFUL MIND
Cover Photograph by Edward Acker
that key finding and devoted my career to determining how diseases like diabetes and atherosclerosis disturbed that function and resulted in vascular disease. It turned out that the function of those lining cells was affected within hours by high sugar or cholesterol lipid levels, and the study of how to prevent and reverse that abnormal function led to current understanding and treatments for vascular disease. Many of your readers take medicines to lower blood sugar and lipids based on the many studies that showed that they prevent the dysfunction of those lining cells and the resulting long term vascular disease. What originally drew your interest to the world of natural science? RAC: Well, I grew up in Maine, and it was all around me. I also had great mentors in sciences. That can be very persuasive in choosing a career. Then there was the “natural wonder” that the sciences brought – but so did art!
You co-majored at Bowdoin College in art and science; that must have been like bringing chocolate and peanut butter together in one candy bar. What sort of art classes did you take? RAC: Absolutely, and I like chocolate and peanut butter very, very much! In college, I was fascinated by draftmanship, and I still doodle alot! It has something to do with that amazing thing that happens when your brain transforms a 3D object into 2D image. I’m still fascinated by that same transformation that happens in my camera. I drew anything and everything nearby, and also developed the drawings into etchings and aquatints. One of my etchings from my senior thesis, was given first prize by a reviewer and appears somewhere in the annals of Portland Press Herald newspaper Sunday Arts section. It still hangs in our hallway. It turns out it’s archival! Was there anything in particular that guided and trained your eye to see while on the job as a bio-