Raymond Cooper's Oakland

In July of 2021, Oakland skateboarder Ben Tolford noticed an unusual pile of trash on the street: binders full of photographic slides, hundreds of images apparently taken in Oakland in the 1970s and 80s.. Handwriting on the slides identified the photographer as Raymond Cooper.

Tolford eventually found Aja Cooper, Raymond’s daughter, and learned that Raymond Cooper had been a professional photographer in Oakland from the 70s into the 90s. Cooper’s photo archive was damaged in a house fire in 1990 and, even worse, stolen in a burglary in 2021, years after Cooper had passed away.

Aja had been devastated to lose this connection to her father and important documentation of Oakland’s history. She was, of course, overjoyed that some of the lost archive was recovered. This amazing story was first documented by Liam O’Donoghue in his podcast East Bay Yesterday, followed by an article in SF Gate in October 2022.

East Bay Photo Collective is proud to announce a collaboration with Aja Cooper for the first-ever exhibition of her father’s lost work. Thousands of images were scanned, with a curated selection reprinted for this exhibition. Cooper’s recovered archive gives a rare glimpse into Oakland's recent history, exploring in wonderful and colorful detail the fashion, hair styles, and street scene of the era as well as Cooper’s own experimental photographic work and family photographs.