Vale John Cohen (August 2, 1932 – September 16, 2019)

From 1972 to 1997, Cohen was a Professor of Visual Arts at SUNY Purchase College where he taught photography and drawing.

A respected musician and founding member of the seminal old-time string band "The New Lost City Ramblers," John Cohen has also had an equally distinguished career as a filmmaker, photographer, and record producer. 

The term high lonesome sound, which he coined for his legendary 1963 documentary film, has become synonymous with an entire genre of American music. 

In addition to extensive fieldwork and documentation of Appalachian culture, Cohen has done important ethnographic research throughout the United States, Britain, and the Peruvian Andes. 

His highly-praised publication, "There Is No Eye: John Cohen Photographs" (2001), and the complementary Smithsonian Folkways CD "There Is No Eye: Music For Photographs," brought together several threads of Cohen's work over the past 50 years. 

As a producer, his many noteworthy recordings include Smithsonian Folkways' releases "An Untamed Sense of Control" by Roscoe Holcomb, "Dark Holler" by Dillard Chandler,

"The Lost Recordings of Banjo Bill Cornett," "If I Had My Way" by Rev. Gary Davis, and the compilation "Back Roads to Cold Mountain." Cohen worked with T-Bone Burnett as music consultant to the film "Cold Mountain," and appeared in Martin Scorcese's film about Bob Dylan, "No Direction Home."