Emmet Gowin Analysis of Photographic Work “The Tetons-Snake River.” Emmet Gowin Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming 1933

Born 1941 in Danville, West Virginia; Major Publications and References Currently retired from the , 1970 living in Newtown, Pennsylvania. 12x12 (Exhibition Catalogue), Providence, Background R.I: Rhode Island School of Design, 1970. Be-ing Without Clothes (Exhibition Catalogue), Richmond Professional Institute, Richmond, Millerton, N.Y.: Aperture, 1970. Virginia, B.F.A, 1965. Album No. 5 (London), Summer, 1970. Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Album No. 6 (London), Fall, 1970. M.F.A., 1967. 1971 Studied with Harry Callahan. The Art of Photography, Time-Life Library Exhibitions of Photography, New York: Time-Life, 1971. 1972 Group Aperture, 16:3, 1972. 1969 Art in Virginia, Richmond, Va.:Virginia George Eastman House, Rochester. Museum of Fine Arts, 1972. 1970 Camera Mainichi (Tokyo),October 1972. “12x12,” Carr House Gallery Road Island Coleman, A. D. “Photography,” New York School of Design, Providence. Times, 9 January 1972. 1971 1974 George Eastman House, Rochester. Celebrations (Exhibition Catalogue), Millerton, “Contemporary Photographers,” Fogg Museum, N.Y.: Aperture, 1974. Harvard University. 1972 , New York. 1974 “Celebrations,” Hayden Galleru, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. One Man Public Collections I would like to bring to attention the work of the contemporary photographer Emmet Gowin. Art Institute of Chicago 1968 Cincinnati Art Museum Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio. Dayton Art Institute In his early childhood and high school years, Emmet‘s artistic work focused on drawing and photographic the reali- 1971 Fogg Museum, Harvard University ties of life. Ansel Adam’s photographs that captured the grandeur of the natural world inspired Emmet to pho- Creative Photography Gallery, Massachusetts Minneapolis Institute of Arts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. tograph nature. It is notable that the style of Emmet Gowin’s later work follows the principles that Adams shot Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, The Photographer’s Gallery, London. by- bold landscape photography with high contrast, natural rhythm, and rich texture. The difference between the 1972 Providence Light Gallery, New York. The Library, Rhode Island School of Design, two photographers, although both photographed landscapes, was that Emmet’s work focused on how landscapes 1973 Providence were altered by humanity. at Carmel, California. University of Kansas Museum of Artm Lawrence Emmet Gowin

Edith, Govin’s wife, is viewed through a Emmet Gowin’s first body of wreath of leaves, standing within the circle photographic work centers of another wreathe, a garland of wild berries on his family and relatives hanging from her breasts suggesting that in their home in Virginia. she is a goddess of nature. The black ring They are, however taken in around the photo is created by a dispropor- such a way that represents tion in the lens and the camera: the use of larger aspects of the hu- a lens that is for a 4x5 Camera on an 8x10 man experience. His niece, camera causes the circle of the lens to be is seen, eyes closed, arms recorded. This dark circle creates a distance twisted and hands clutch- between the viewer and the subject, creat- ing goose eggs, a symbol ing a vignette and isolating the subject in of fertility, as if in a state of the picture frame. The edges of the lens trance or seizure. His niece create a stretching of space slightly simu- is seen again at a younger lating the distortion bend from a fish eye age lying on a grouping of lens. Sometimes the lens distortions help dolls as if being modeled to create an ambiguous scaling of objects, like a doll herself, un-lifelike for example, in Gowin’s Isle of Skye, stacks and cold. In both of these of peat look like their multiplied to infin- photos Gowin draws em- ity. Sometimes the edges of the circles are phasis on his subjects by more clearly defined, while other times they merge into dark spaces, as in the Image of using heavy light on the the Ice Fish. Again we see that Gowin’s suc- subject in contrast to a dark cess comes from the dramatic differences background. between light and shadow. The tones of the print help to bring out these sorts of quali- ties.

Edith and Berrry Necklace, Danville (Top) Virginia, 1971 Gelatin Silver Print 8x10 inches Nancy Wells, Danville, Virginia, Peat, Isle of Skye, Scotland, 1972 (Middle) 1969 Gelatin Silver Print Gelatin Silver Print 8x10 inches 5.5x7 Inches Ice Fish, Danville, Virginia, 1971 (Bottom) Gelatin Silver Print 8x10 inches While at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1967 Gowin worked with photog- rapher Harry Calla- han who was one of his greatest influences. Like Callahan, Emmet found photographic inspira- tion in his wife Edith and recorded pictures of their daily life together. In this way Gowin’s photographic work was unique from Callahan’s due to the difference in how Callahan tended to abstract his work while Edith was photo- graphed for he expres- sion and feeling.

“What he’ll do is just stare a little bit,” she says, “and I know to keep the feeling I have there, whether it’s a solemnness or whether it’s a glee in my eye—whatever it is, to not get into another mood.” This is the way Emmet finds interest of the subjects in his family. His wife models in such a way that captures the believability of the moment. There’s much inspiration in how Emmet captures the beauty of his wife. The photographs that Emmet took of his family launched a distinguished career and earned him fellowships from the Gug- genheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and his work has been featured in numerous museum collections. Emmet Gowin

I always knew that it wasn’t going to last. You can’t be an artist and have your identity reside in only one thing. The thing that you master will become a stranger to you, and you will outlive it or you will need to live into something else. You will always need to be educating yourself to the complexity of your feelings as they grow, and you don’t want to do something twice, really. Everything that makes you an artist in a sense is the way things are understood; how they fit together in ways that have not been understood before. How can you discover the inher- ent value that’s hidden in things that you haven’t yet seen? It’s in that sense that you want to do something new. And you know that it’s chance that’s going to put those things together. Only chance can bring together new combinations in a way that is revolutionary. No one ever discovered anything really important intentionally.

Emmet Gowin

Gowin in the above statement is talking about his transition from taking family pictures to landscape photography. For his whole thirty year career as a photographer he shot the same pictures of the same town with the same subjects and continued to find inspiration. It’s amazing to look at how he got such great material from photographing his family. His continuous career in lanscape photog- raphy was in the interest of documenting the world as it is -marked by human activity. Gowin took photos that create tension between visual beauty and devastation. When one looks at his photos from a distance the earth looks untouched and beautiful, but to look closer is to see the deformed land by man made structures and cut out earth. The photo to the right, taken in the Czech Republic, is one of these examples. He captures the rich textures of the land and finds areas that draw your eye with the natural rythms caused by the repitions of line in the earth. It is a beautiful picture, but if you look closer at the history of coal mining you’ll figure out that hundred of square miles of land are being devasted due to the mining in the Czech Republic. There is alot that can be learned from Emmet Emmet Gowin Gowin’s Photography. Creativity in subject mat- ter is one thing. The majority of his work away from lanscapes focuses on his wife Edith. Look on the right in Gowin’s Edith in Panama, Double Edith and Rothschildia. Gowin uses the refliction in water to photographic Edith. The transforma- tion from Edith to Edith’s double along with the leaf creating negative space around both the Works Cited heads creates visual interest. Below in Edith in Panama, Edith Remebering, line flow out of the Pictures two dominant forms at the top and bottom of the photo. Two distorted shadows of figures http://www.artnet.com/artists/emmet-gowin/ flow through the lines, distorting themselves http://www.jacksonfineart.com/Emmet- and acting as a representation of how squewed Gowin-5130.html memories can be. Gowin’s continous renewal of his subject in his photos is very inspirational to http://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/ICE-FISH-- photographers looking for a new way to respond DANVILLE--VIRGINIA/484D2A8596EB47F6 to their subjects. http://www.pacemacgill.com/selected_works/ detailspage.php?artist=Emmet%20Gowin&img_ num=25 http://www.mocp.org/detail.php?t=people&type =related&kv=7183

Edith In Panama, Double Edith and Rothschildia, 2003 Unique gold tone salt print on Twin Rocker handmade Print 15.5x10.25 inches

Edith in Panama, Observing and Remembering, 2001 Unique gold toned salt print with ink and color added on handmade Book and Crown Water- marked paper. 15.25x10.25 inches