The Eighth Image was initially inspired by the creative collaboration between the renown writer HG Wells and the acclaimed photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn. Published in 1915 by Grant Richards Ltd, London, The Door in the Wall and Other Stories features eight short stories by Wells, illustrated with photographs by Coburn. In The Eighth Image, the relationship between writer and photographer is reversed; writer and lecturer Alan Colwyn is commissioned to write eight short stories based on a series of photographs sent to him by an elusive photographer named Henry Graham Wilkes. Although the two correspond regularly via e-mail, Henry Wilkes takes steps to ensure that they never meet and his identity remains secret. The Eighth Image is Cohen’s account of Wilkes’ commission, his repeated attempts to track down the mysterious photographer, his discoveries about Wilkes’ inspirations and influences and the writing of the eight stories to accompany Wilkes’ photographs. The Eighth Image draws on Wells' classic short story The Door in the Wall, in which a man is seeking an other-worldly experience he once encountered but is never able to recapture. 

Al Colwyn, the central character of The Eighth Image is an aspiring writer commissioned to write a series of short stories to accompany a selection of photographs produced by a renowned photographer whom no one seems to have met. Colwyn becomes obsessed with the mysterious HGW, but is increasingly uncertain if he is imagining the connections and co-incidences he experiences and observes. The resulting eight stories Colwyn eventually completes reflect aspects of the locations and themes of the images, but are as much about Colwyn’s own beliefs, obsessions and uncertainties. Later when Wilkes vanishes, Cohen takes the decision to publish the work himself.

A central theme of The Eighth Image is focused on the complex relationship between creative activity and personal identity; Colwyn aspires to become a full-time writer and Henry Wilkes, the commissioning photographer is not whom he appears to be. Colwyn’s efforts to locate and identify Wilkes through an analysis of the photographs he is sent leads him to explore aspects of his own desires, uncertainties and unconscious motivations. Hoping to share the challenge of publication with the more accomplished artist, Colwyn eventually tracks Wilkes down only to find he is left on his own to bring the project to fruition.

The Eighth Image is an attempt to explore the nature of artistic creativity, and the way in which any creative act is inevitably a collaborative venture, no matter how much the individual artist claims authorship. Colwyn’s decision to take up the commission is his first step away from the myth of “personal expression” towards his goal to be acknowledged as an artist.

The Eighth Image is comprised of three sections: Part One is centred on Colwyn’s acceptance of Wilkes’ commission and his quest to discover the photographers’ true identity. Colwyn’s attempts to team up with the curator Lucy Collins do not work out the way he had hoped- either on a romantic level or in terms of his attempts to find out more about Henry Wilkes. Throughout  part one Colwyn is attempting to trace Wilkes and in so doing he not only uncovers evidence of Wilkes’ creative influences and spiritual aspirations, but begins the tentative steps of his own artistic journey.

Part Two comprises of the eight short stories Colwyn subsequently writes: The titles of which are drawn directly from Wells: (A Moonlight Fable, The Diamond Maker, The Cone, The Country of the Blind, The Lord of the Dynamos, The Star, A Dream of Armageddon, and The Door in the Wall), but each of them explores the connection between the image made by Wilkes and Colwyn’s own understanding of the dynamics and challenges of the creative impulse.

Part Three concludes the story. Although Colwyn is able to uncover the secret of HGW’s identity following his disappearance, he feels compelled to publish the stories and accompanying photographs himself. The Eighth Image is the result of Colwyn’s creative  journey.

“Was I creating a complicated story out of all of this? I had an image of one of those children’s “join the dots” puzzle drawings where you are supposed to follow the numbers in the correct order to reveal the picture. When I was a kid I often deliberately ignored the proper sequence so that I would end up with something else completely. Perhaps I was doing an adult version of this; leading myself “up the garden path”. (Or was it down?) Still, whatever the relationship with the reality of the situation, I was hooked….”