BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 9.5 x 11.75 in. / 240 pgs / 180 duotone.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 10/31/2013 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION Contact Publisher Catalog:
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781597112611TRADE List Price: $69.95 CDN $85.00
AVAILABILITY Not Available
This long-awaited survey encompasses nearly four decades of photographs, exploring themes of faith, familial bonds, love and the spirit of place.
APERTURE
Emmet Gowin
Text by Keith F. Davis, Emmet Gowin, Carlos Gollonet.
Throughout his prolific career as a photographer, Emmet Gowin has threaded together seemingly disparate subjects: his wife, Edith, and their extended family; American and European landscapes; aerial views of environmental devastation, brought together by his ongoing interest in issues of scale, the impact of the individual, and notions of belonging. This long-awaited survey pays tribute to Gowin’s remarkable career and his impact on the medium. Following his marriage to Edith Morris in 1964, Gowin began work on a series of images of his extended family that is now recognized as a touchstone of twentieth-century American photography. He photographed the children and the aging parents, and made intimate portraits of his wife, continuing a photographic tradition inherited from his mentor, Harry Callahan, with whom he studied in the 1960s. His focus broadened in the 1980s, when he began an exploration of landscape and aerial photography, most specifically in his documentation of Mount St. Helens and the American West. He has photographed in the Czech Republic, Italy, Mexico, Japan and the United States, with a continued interest in irrigation, mining and natural resources, and the effects of military testing on the environment. As a photography professor at Princeton University from 1973 to 2009, Gowin has exerted a powerful influence on several generations of photographers. Emmet Gowin (born 1941) earned his MFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1967, after studying graphic design as an undergraduate. He has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Corcorcan Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Escape Photographie Marie de Paris. Gowin has published more than six monographs, and has been awarded several honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the Pew Fellowship for the Arts and the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
American Photo
Jack Crager
This catalog showcases Gowin's brilliant versatility, from intimate studies of his wife and family to aerial shots of environ - mental woes to more recent abstract composites.
TIME
Phil Bicker
A beautiful and long awaited monograph of quiet and intimate influence from a master photographer and teacher Emmet Gowin—whose writing is as eloquent and profound as his images are beautiful and sincere.
TIME Lightbox
Phil Bicker
A beautiful and long awaited monograph of quiet and intimate influence from a master photographer and teacher Emmet Gowin—whose writing is as eloquent and profound as his images are beautiful and sincere.
PDN
David Walker
" My age now is 25 and I have been photographing for almost six years. From the beginning I wanted to make pictures so potent that I would not need to say anything about them": This is how Emmet Gowin began the artist's statement for his graduate thesis project in 1967. He went on to career producing images full of beauty, mystery and spirituality. Fundacion Mapfre mounted a retrospective of Gowin's work in Madrid earlier this year, and issued this catalogue with the richly reproduced images. The book includes much analysis, at times over-wrought. But it also includes the transcript of a talk Gowin gave in 2009 when he retired from teaching at Princeton University after 36 years. What he had to say was engaging, insightful and inspiring. The catalogue traces the full arc of his career, starting with his earliest images of his wife and muse, Edith, and her extended family in Danville, Virginia. Gowin's artistic collaboration with his wife is at the root of all of his work. It was through Edith that he found his voice as an artist, and he had her in mind when he concluded the 1967 artist's statement by writing, " For me, pictures provide a means of holding, intensely, a moment of communication between one human and another."
The Telegraph
Alec Soth
Beautifully understated design, great printing and solid scholarship.
The Guardian
Sean O'Hagan
An in-depth look at one of America's most overlooked photographers.
The Christian Science Monitor
Joanne Ciccarello
In EMMET GOWIN, a retrospective from 1967 to the present, we come to know and appreciate the retired Princeton University professor’s singular vision. What began as an intimate love story between two people broadens to embrace the natural world. Yet, the intimacy of his family portraits never diminishes.
Featured image, "Edith, Chincoteague Island, Virginia" (1967), is reproduced from Aperture's long-awaited four-decade survey of Emmet Gowin, named one of TIME magazine's Best Photobooks of 2013. Gowin wrote, in 1976 and 2001, "'Through my marriage to Edith Morris, in 1964, I entered 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…' These words, written more than thirty-five years ago, continue to embody an ideal that I do not wish to outlive. Although all creative work requires an encounter with the unknown, and a visitation to places we do not yet understand, making the images of Edith continues to be the central thread and redeeming experience within my life. It is, in large measure, the central poem within my work. These pictures are how I feel about the world." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 11.75 in. / 240 pgs / 180 duotone. LIST PRICE: U.S. $69.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $85 ISBN: 9781597112611 PUBLISHER: Aperture AVAILABLE: 10/31/2013 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: No longer our product AVAILABILITY: Not Available
Published by Aperture. Text by Keith F. Davis, Emmet Gowin, Carlos Gollonet.
Throughout his prolific career as a photographer, Emmet Gowin has threaded together seemingly disparate subjects: his wife, Edith, and their extended family; American and European landscapes; aerial views of environmental devastation, brought together by his ongoing interest in issues of scale, the impact of the individual, and notions of belonging. This long-awaited survey pays tribute to Gowin’s remarkable career and his impact on the medium. Following his marriage to Edith Morris in 1964, Gowin began work on a series of images of his extended family that is now recognized as a touchstone of twentieth-century American photography. He photographed the children and the aging parents, and made intimate portraits of his wife, continuing a photographic tradition inherited from his mentor, Harry Callahan, with whom he studied in the 1960s. His focus broadened in the 1980s, when he began an exploration of landscape and aerial photography, most specifically in his documentation of Mount St. Helens and the American West. He has photographed in the Czech Republic, Italy, Mexico, Japan and the United States, with a continued interest in irrigation, mining and natural resources, and the effects of military testing on the environment. As a photography professor at Princeton University from 1973 to 2009, Gowin has exerted a powerful influence on several generations of photographers.
Emmet Gowin (born 1941) earned his MFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1967, after studying graphic design as an undergraduate. He has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Corcorcan Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Escape Photographie Marie de Paris. Gowin has published more than six monographs, and has been awarded several honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the Pew Fellowship for the Arts and the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.
