THE MAGNATE
How a vagabond from New York changed powder ski photography forever.
LEE COHEN STEERED his pewter brown 2003 Suburban up the winding road in Little Cottonwood Canyon, bound for another day of skiing at Alta Ski Area. It was April. An Altaholics Anonymous sticker was plastered on the bumper next to a dented Utah license plate proclaiming the state’s natural treasure: “The Greatest Snow on Earth.” He wore a knit beanie and the transition lenses on his spectacles were a dark purple. The inside of his Suburban was just as dirty as the outside. Mud covered the seats, the mats were crusted with dirt, and dust was everywhere. All signs pointed to Cohen’s regular passenger, his dog Zeke. An old Grateful Dead cassette tape provided the soundtrack because his CD player had broken a while ago.
“This is the last show they ever played at the Fillmore East,” says Cohen. “I’ve probably had this tape in my car for three months. I love it. To me, it’s the best Dead show ever: April 29, 1971.”
Cohen, 60, has a near photographic memory. He can recall numbers—dates and addresses—as if he were reading them aloud from a piece of paper. This is how he’s categorized so many vivid details of his earlier years. But for the last 40, Cohen’s tool for documentation has been his Nikon camera.
As the longest tenured professional ski photographer at Alta, Cohen is largely responsible for disseminating—and defining—what skiing powder looks like, especially at the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon. His images are famous for envious turns in deep, textured snow, but his portfolio also includes culture—mounds of snow on the patio,
