"Great black and white photographers, PART 2"

EMMET GOWIN

He was an art photographer and teacher. He was born 1941 in Danville, Virginia. He graduated from high school, and then he attended the Richmond Professional Institute, now Virginia Commonwealth University. He first gained attention in the 1970s with his intimate portraits of his wife, Edith, and her family. Later he turned his attention to the landscapes taking aerial photographs of places that had been changed by humans or nature.

He began exploring the enigmas of daily life. The pictures are made as a part of everyday life and are not the result of any project or assignment; it was with a camera on a tripod. He was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship 1974 and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships 1977, 1979 and received such arts awards as the Pew fellowship 1993 and Friends of Photography Peer Award 1992.

His first major exhibit was at the Museum of Modern Art in 1971 with Robert Adams and he has since had solo exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia, and the Light Gallery. His work is represented in such collections as those of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Gowin teaches at Princeton University and also pursues his own work as a freelance photographer.  Gowin retired from teaching at Princeton University at the end of 2009 and lives in Pennsylvania with his wife Edith.