Emmet Gowin Essay

Emmet Gowin’s story begins in a southern part of Virgina called Danville in 1941 where he was born and raised. Gowin’s photography began in 1961, but in 1964 Gowin married a woman named Edith Morris. Gowins first photographs were black and white of his wife and family. It was the intimate pictures of Edith that first gained Gowin attention. They had two sons, Elijah and Isaac. Gowin was a family man who was deeply religious, in fact it is said that his picture’s also have a deeply religious meaning behind them. I believe his pictures weren’t so religious as they were an emotional attachment to this new family he had found, he was awed by them in a way he had never before felt. The photography of them was a way to express his emotions to these people who he loved as his own.

He himself states,

“Through my marriage to Edith Morris, in 1964, I entered into a family freshly different from my own. I admired their simplicity and generosity, and thought of the pictures I made as agreements. I wanted to pay attention to the body and personality that had agreed out of love to reveal itself. My attention was a natural duty which could honor that love. Through the lives of new relatives, my more whole family, I returned to the mood that finds solemnity in daily life. As a child, one has the time for such pastimes as sunlight on the water or the weave of the parch screen and the openings and closings of those doors. I wish never to outgrow that leisure."

It was a trip to Washington after the eruption of Mount Saint Helen's in 1980 that Gowin began to take aerial pictures of natural disasters and large agricultural projects. Some of the things he photographed were; strip mines, nuclear testing sites, large scale agricultural fields, and other “scars in the natural landscapes.” He took these pictures for almost 20 years.

He attended Richmond Professional Institute and graduated in 1965, he continued his education at Rhode Island School of Design and graduated from there in 1967. Gowin studied under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskird. Other photographers that influenced him were; Eugene Atget, Bill Brandt, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Alfred Stieglitz, and Frederick Sommer. He dominantly used a large format 8x10 camera, sometimes he would use a 4x5 lens to get a very dramatic vingette, and most of his pictures were taken with a tripod. Gowin has recieved; the Guggerheim Fellowship (1977), two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (1977 and 1979), a Friends of Photography Peer Award (1992), and the Pew Fellowship in the Arts (1994). Gowin retired from Princeton University in 2009, and resides with his wife in Pennsylvania. Emmet Gowin has wrote four books; Photographs (1976), Emmet Gowin Photographs (1966-1983), Petra (1986), and Emmet Gowin: Aerial Photographs (1997).  

Here  are two photographs that I took in the style of Emmet Gowin

The first is a photograph in black and white of my husband in the doorway of our bedroom. The second is my cousin Morgan staring into the distance.I really wanted to imitate Gowins vignette, which was one that I really wanted to attempt, but they wouldn’t come out right. I also made the attempt to take aerial pictures, but the guy never got back in touch.

Online Works Cited

Artsor

Wikipedia

Masters of Photography