EMMET GOWIN – PHOTOGRAPHS
2015-08-24As an artist and a teacher, Emmet Gowin (b. 1941) is one of the most important photographers of the last 50 years. His pictures honor the medium’s past while exploring classic themes in a fresh and deeply personal way.
Gowin’s technical expertise serves his poetic purpose. He is interested in the wonder of the everyday, the intimacy of the family, the depth of human history, and the majesty of nature. Through the logic of his creative vision, these varied subjects unite to form a richly original artistic whole.
Gowin first achieved art-world renown in the early 1970s for his family photographs of his wife Edith and her kin, in Danville, Virginia. Inspired by the simplicity of the amateur snapshot, these fresh and spontaneous photographs elevate the details of everyday life to the level of dream and myth. While Edith remained an important subject, Gowin’s interests grew to include the landscape, deep cultural time, and the traces of human activity on the face of the earth.
Over his long and distinguished career, Gowin’s artistic goal has remained the same: to use the camera to explore the mystery and poetic resonance of what is everywhere around us
Opposite – Edith and Ruth, Danville, Virginia, 1966
Exhibition runs through to November 8th, 2015
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
4525 Oak Street
Kansas City
MO
6411
