GOWIN, Emmet

About US-American photographer Emmet GOWIN (b.1941 in Danville, Virginia)

Emmet GOWIN was influenced by the work of Eugene ATGET, Bill BRANDT, Walker EVANS, Robert FRANK, Alfred STIEGLITZ and especially Harry CALLAHAN and Frederick SOMMER. Most of his early family pictures were taken with a 4×5 camera on a tripod. At the age of sixteen, he saw a photograph by Ansel ADAMS showing a burnt tree with a young bud growing from its stump. He later applied what he had learned in his early years hiking through forests and swamps to his photography. During his first year at Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University), he saw a catalog of the exhibition 'Family of Man' and was particularly inspired by the works of Robert FRANK and Henri CARTIER-BRESSON. Another inspiration was his wife Edith's large and dedicated family. In 1965, he attended the Rhode Island School of Design. While earning his MFA, he studied under the influential US photographers Harry CALLAHAN and Aaron SISKIND. Around the same time, he met photographer Frederick SOMMER, who became his lifelong mentor and friend. He first gained attention in the 1970s with his intimate portraits of his wife Edith and their family. He later turned his attention to the landscapes of the American West, taking aerial photographs of places that had been altered by man or nature, including the Hanford Site, Mount St. Helens and the test site in Nevada. He taught photography at Princeton University from 1973 to 2009. Emmet GOWIN lives in Pennsylvania with his wife Edith.

Photo books by as well as with works by Emmet GOWIN

• 'Private Realities: Recent American Photography' (1974); 'Emmet Gowin: Photographs' (1976, 2009); 'Photographs: 1966-1983' (1984); 'Petra. In the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan' (1986); 'Photographs' (1990); 'A Deja-Vu #7' (1992); 'Aerial Photographs' (1998); 'Changing the Earth: aerial photographs' (2002); 'Photographs: 1967-2000' (2004); 'Mariposas Nocturna ‒ Edith in Panama' (2006); 'Maggie' (2008); 'A Collective Portrait' (2009); 'Emmet Gowin' (2013); 'Hidden Likeness' (2015); 'A Shared Elegy' (2017, together with works by Elijah GOWIN); 'Mariposas Nocturnas: Moths of Central and South America, A Study in Beauty and Diversity' (2017); 'Here on Earth Now: Notes from the Field' (2017); 'The Nevada Test Site' (2019); 

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