Gabriel Amadeus Cooney, Photographs of Outdoor Scenes During Snowfall, January 16, 1983, black and white negatives digitized positive, 35mm film, Amherst College Photographer Records.
This photograph, taken in 1983 by Amherst College staff photographer Gabriel Cooney, depicts a cold, snowy morning outside the athletic facilities at Amherst College. Fresh, untrodden snow blankets the ground as barren brush and thin trees poke through. Snow actively falls and snowflakes are visible against the brick backdrop of Pratt Pool. The buildings are free of snow, maintaining their clean, sharp façades. The imposing white peak of Coolidge Cage is the most prominent feature of the backdrop, standing tall against the rugged hills and slicing through the thick snowfall. The foreground shows Amherst actively affected by natural phenomena, while the buildings in the background display how the college has managed to insulate itself and its students from the region’s harsh elements for over a hundred years. The photos Cooney captured were taken on 35mm roll film, and black and white negatives were digitized and reversed to appear as normal black and white photos.
As with any film camera, the captured film was taken to a darkroom and chemically treated to reveal the images. This creates a negative, where dark areas appear light and vice versa. “Positive” or standard images can then be created on photo paper or digitized, as in this case. The model of the camera was not specified, but some research leads me to infer that it may have been taken with the Nikon FM2, a popular film camera released in 1982 that found strong favor with professionals due to its ruggedness (suitable for wintry conditions like those in my photo) and its high flash speed, which made short-exposure photos even more precise. This could be why we can make out some of the falling snow across the backdrop of Coolidge Cage.
As a staff photographer, Cooney likely had a purpose similar to today’s manager of Amherst’s social media accounts—promote the college and its allure through photography. Haoran Tong ‘23 has helped continue Cooney’s role in earnest, working to document the change of the seasons in Amherst through photography, which then gets used in social media and promotional material for the College. The eye-catching nature of this fierce storm made it essential for Cooney to capture its interplay with the College’s robust edifices. From its untouched appearance, I predict the photo was likely taken in the morning hours when the snow was still fresh and falling. This is supported by other images in the gallery like Image 6, where the snow appears almost completely untrodden save for the skier.
Gabriel Cooney began his freelance photography work in 1967 as a self-taught enthusiast and states that he seeks to use his photographic talents to benefit good causes. To that end, his wider body of work falls into five categories that he lists on his site: non-profits, portraits, museums, academic marketing, and professions.1 Interestingly, nearly all of his newer works include a main focal point, usually people interacting with an environment around them or posing with the tools of their trade, but this photograph represents a deviation from the rest of his existing corpus. This photo, taken for his position as staff photographer, may not gel with the rest of his newer corpus of work, but the reputational boost gained from his work as staff photographer seems to have allowed Cooney to focus on more of his personal interests later in his career.
Snow is the clear star of the show when it comes to the weather event reflected in this image. Cooney’s image displays both ongoing snowfall and snow that has already connected on the ground. Although the limited resolution of the film camera and the snow obscuring the scene prevents a perfect view of the snowfall, we can still observe a large mass of fresh snow and note its high albedo (reflectiveness). Another point remains worth noting: despite the serene and picturesque nature of the photograph, the Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather notes that in cold climates (like Amherst), atmospheric pollutants like soot, mercury, and heavy metals enter the ecosystem and can remain throughout snowmelt.2 This reminds us, ironically, that even though snow can be an awe-inspiring natural feature of our climate, it can also cause lasting damage to ecosystems from these unseen pollutants. The path of this photo to its place in the Amherst College Archives & Special Collections is very straightforward. As an photographer employed by Amherst College, all of Cooney’s college-sanctioned photographs were preserved in the Amherst College Photographer Records, which is a subsection of the Archives & Special Collections. I used five primary sources to develop a deeper knowledge of this photograph and its elements, three of which come from peer-reviewed academic sources. The first is a chapter from Amherst in the World titled “Feeding Amherst.”3 While this source is not primarily focused on winter weather or photography, it does mention some of the limitations and headaches that snow caused for early Amherst students. With no food provided on campus, students had to go into boardinghouses and taverns to eat in town, even in wintry weather. Amherst buildings like Coolidge Cage can be places of refuge, but snow remains untamed outdoors. While modern students may be able to ignore the snow by using Doordash to get a hot coffee delivered to them without leaving their building, we all continue to make the cold trudge to and from our classes and into town when we need a haircut. I view this as a critical feature of not just Amherst’s weather, but its climate that dictates our attitudes and expectations regarding snow. The second source is titled “Reflexions on the Photographic Archive in the Humanities” by Margrit Prussat.4 This source discusses the inherent links between photography and the humanities that date back to the advent of the medium. Collections of academic photography inspire thoughtful research and display the evolution of academic institutions. Photography also humanizes academic institutions, breaking down their prestigious, exclusive, white-collar outer shells. I think this is especially true for my selected photo, as the blanketing snow seems to ‘dull’ the figure of the imposing buildings and adds a calm feeling to the environment. The third source I used was titled “Objects of Affect: Photography Beyond the Image” by anthropologist Elizabeth Edwards.5 She argues that we should not only interact with photographs through their visual content, but also through the wider world that surrounds the image, in both the physical and social realm. I agree that a deeper level of engagement is needed beyond solely the visual to truly understand the value that a photograph brings.
Footnote
- “Gabriel Amadeus Cooney Photography,” accessed March 26, 2025, http://gabrielcooney.com/index.html. ↩︎
- Matthew Sturm and Samuel C. Colbeck, “Snow,” Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather, ed. Stephen H. Schneider, Terry L. Root, and Michael D. Mastrandrea (Oxford University Press, 2011). ↩︎
- Daniel Levinson Wilk, “Feeding Amherst,” in Amherst in the World, ed. Martha Saxton (Amherst College Press, 2020), 163–180. ↩︎
- Margrit Prussat, “Reflexions on the Photographic Archive in the Humanities,” in Global Photographies: Memory–History–Archives, ed. Sissy Helff and Stefanie Michels (Verlag, 2018), 133–154. ↩︎
- Elizabeth Edwards, “Objects of Affect: Photography Beyond the Image,” Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012): 221–34. ↩︎