TPM Episode 442: Lee Cohen, Legendary Photographer
The Powell Movement
Mike Powell
4.9 • 860 Ratings
🗓️ 21 July 2025
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lee Cohen may be the most dirtbag ski bum I've had on the podcast, and that's an honor, but that was back in his early 20's. Eventually, Lee moved west from New York, picked up a camera and became the authority on what powder skiing photos should look like. Along the way, he followed the dead, had a pro skier kid, and shot some of the best photos that Utah skiing has to offer. It's a business episode with one of those early creatives, who maybe weren't all business, but still crushed it. Lee's kid, Sammo Cohen asks the Inappropriate Questions.
Lee Cohen Show Notes:
4:00: Jewish stuff, New York, skiing, knee issues, dropping out of school, hitchhiking, Yellowstone, and ski bummery
20:00: Liquid Force, Feel the Pull and get 15% off your LF Purchase by using the code Powell15 at checkout
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23:00: The Dead, back to school, post grad ski bumming in Utah, getting a camera, getting rejected from Powder, first published photos, and film
41:00: Elan Skis: Over 75 years of innovation that makes you better.
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43:00: Being pigeonholed as a power photographer, trips, money, Alta, Jamie Pierre,
57:00: Inappropriate Questions with son, Sammo Cohen
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Have a seat on your porcelain throne. |
| 0:02.3 | It's time to talk some shit on the Powell Movement. |
| 0:13.3 | Welcome to the Powell Movement. |
| 0:16.9 | I'm your host Mike Powell, and as you're listening to this, |
| 0:19.9 | it's been one month since I lost my wife, |
| 0:22.2 | And I'm fucking broken. I mean, I spent three years caring for and feeling so bad for |
| 0:28.2 | Anne's while she had cancer, and now she's gone, and it's like everything has started over again, |
| 0:33.1 | and now I feel so bad for Keaton and I. And this grief is hard to explain. While I'm holding my shit together right now, a lot of times I really can't do this. I mean, most people have gone through grief with losing someone, but when it's your partner, who you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with, it's a completely different animal. I wake up, I turn on the Peloton bike, and then I see a big picture of Anne's in the |
| 0:56.1 | Peloton menu. |
| 0:57.3 | And then I usually start crying, and that lasts throughout my ride. |
| 1:00.3 | I punish myself by listening to Florence and the Machine, the dog days are over, because |
| 1:05.6 | for some reason, Anne's put that in an Instagram video, and whenever I heard it, it just |
| 1:09.9 | kind of really hit me emotionally. And I play that every morning when I get on the bike. And I cry through that and pretty much through the rest of my ride. And that's how I start my days. Then I try to eat, but I usually don't have an appetite for too much after my morning sadness. And then I try to work. And usually it doesn't go so well. I get lost in way too many Anne's rabbit |
| 1:28.5 | holes that I'm diving deep into and the next thing you know my head is so messed up that I can't get |
| 1:33.0 | anything done. I've tried therapy and so far I'm not feeling it but I'm going to try it again |
| 1:38.2 | when I get back from this vacation and this trip it's going to be so hard. Anne's was such an |
| 1:43.5 | important part of my side of the family and she loved them so much and she loved this trip, it's going to be so hard. And's was such an important part of my side of the family, and she loved them so much, and she loved this trip so much. |
| 1:48.7 | So much so that in one of her notebooks, she wrote that the first place that she wanted to have her ashes spread was on Rojoboth Beach in a certain spot with my whole family. |
| 1:58.0 | So an hour ago, I went into my urn, and I took Ange, and I put her in Tupperware |
| 2:03.4 | for the Flight East. As always, I'm going to be working through the pain, and this week I have a |
| 2:08.9 | podcast with legendary ski photographer Lee Cohen. This was the first podcast I recorded after Ange, |
| 2:15.3 | and I don't remember it. That could be the shock of the loss I experienced, |
... |
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