Elijah Cobb

Elijah Cobb
born July 13, 1950

Photographer Elijah Cobb may be the only person ever to spend more money on housing in Cody than in New York City.

"I had incredibly low overhead there," Cobb said. "My apartment was $150 a month," and he worked in a darkroom in the basement of a building a few blocks away.

Since moving to Cody in 1995, Cobb's overhead has risen. He co-owns a home, a mountain cabin and Stone Soup studios. But he still aims to keep his overhead low, particularly when it comes to the power bill.

Cobb and Linda Raynolds were the first in Cody to spin their electric meter backwards, using solar panels to power Stone Soup studios. He has also installed a solar water heater, and even a makeshift passive solar chicken solarium made from double-paned sliding glass doors.

Chickens are frequent subjects in Cobb's work as a photographer, including photos that have a distinctly painterly quality, using the interplay of color and light to portray the natural world in surprising and unexpected perspectives.

His photos use colored gels, strobes, sunlight and unique techniques developed from years of playing with light.

Last winter, a season Cobb calls "studio time," he shaped a giant lens from ice, using it to focus the sun's rays and start a fire.

"I enjoy that quiet community time in winter," he said, calling those months one of his favorite things about life in Cody.

Cobb worked as a fine art photographer in New York, and supplemented his income printing photographs and doing commercial studio photography.

He continues those pursuits here, but said he misses a group in New York known as the Photo Salon, where he and other members would discuss and critique non-commercial photographic work.

"I miss the everyday assumption and acceptance that diversity of everything in life is good," he said.

But Cody has changed in the dozen years since his arrival, Cobb said, with more art galleries opening and more artists and photographers coalescing around its limitless natural beauty.

Though he misses the anonymity of big city life, Cobb said he is also sensitive to the changes growth has brought to a place like Cody, adding that focusing development near existing cities and towns is key to preserving the area's unique qualities.

He advises newcomers to "be involved in the variety of ways to make a living and get by."

"The monetary side is not the only side. It's getting an elk for your winter meat supply, or exploring all the ways you can do for yourself and barter with your neighbors to get by and increase your interdependence with your community," he said.

Cobb's life and work continue to revolve around chasing light amidst nature during Wyoming's abundant sunny days.

"It's the combination of photography and the style of work I do, where I deal with light and passive solar power, the capturing and excluding of sunlight...or a lens made out of ice where you start fire," he said. "Those things all work together in some strange way. That's what life is all about — playing with light.

"And Wyoming is good for that."