Thomas Joshua Cooper has travelled to the ends of the earth, literally, to capture his spectacular images.

The photographer’s acclaimed career has been spent taking spectacular, evocative images of the most extreme locations surrounding the Atlantic Ocean. Over the last three decades, he’s framed rocks, ice, sea and sand using the same bulky, large-format camera dating from 1898.

Taking a single exposure at each location, the photographer, above, who cannot swim despite his acclaimed seascapes, develops the negative and prints by hand back in his Glasgow darkroom.

The photographs, a series of which is on display at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, contain an unintentional poignancy – each point will be underwater within 35 years due to the climate crisis.

California-born Cooper made Scotland his home having founded Glasgow School of Art’s Fine Art Photography Department in 1982.

He said: “I have worked most of my life on this project and having an exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland is the first time I have been able to show the work in my adopted homeland. I am hugely pleased and very grateful for this opportunity.”

Cooper has set foot on uncharted land masses through his work, earning him naming rights of previously unknown islands and archipelagos. The only artist to have ever photographed the two poles, he refers to this body of work as The World’s Edge – The Atlas Of Emptiness And Extremity.

Thomas Joshua Cooper: The World’s Edge is at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery until January 23