Mistral is my 20-year project photographing the effects of France’s famous wind that blows as often as 200 days a year, sometimes reaching hurricane strength. My work takes place where an invisible force makes itself visible through what it touches. The mistral hones the landscape, influences the architecture and agriculture, shapes the very character of the inhabitants. It slams doors, lifts roof tiles, steals fruit from trees. No one escapes it. This is not a story about the environment; it is an investigation of how deeply we are connected to our environment and to nature’s invisible forces
Rachel Cobb began covering news 25 years ago in New York City. Since then her documentary and editorial assignment work has been published in The New York Times (daily and magazine), The New Yorker, Time, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, Outside, etc... Her subjects have ranged from the evangelical movement in Guatemala to the effects of sanctions in Iraq to anti-poaching tracking efforts in South Africa to water-borne diseases in Tanzania as well as long-term personal work in far West Texas. Cobb’s first monograph Mistral: The Legendary Wind of Provence was published by Damiani in 2018.
Awards Cobb's work has received a Pictures of the Year award for her work in Sarajevo during the war, a National Press Photographers Association award for her 9/11 essay in Time, a FOTOfusion Rising Star Award for her work on Guatemala’s evangelical movement, and a Marty Forscher Grant for Humanistic Photography for her work documenting New York City’s homeless.
