Emmet Gowin / The Most Intimate Photograph

 

Nancy, Danville (Virginie), 1969 

The Most Intimate Photograph

By Chris Wiley
January 10, 2017

One of the most beautiful photographs I know of is an image of a woman standing in the doorway of a barn, backlit in a sheer nightgown, peeing on the floorboards beneath her. It was taken in Danville, Virginia, in 1971, by the photographer Emmet Gowin, and the woman in question is his wife, Edith. The picture is so piercingly intimate that I find it difficult even to look at it. This is not because I feel as if I am intruding, or being shown something that I was not meant to see, but simply because it seems to hover too close to the vital force of human connection. It is too poignant, too alive. Rather than merely avoiding clichés—about love and intimacy, artist and muse, public and private­—the picture seems to repel them, as an amulet repels evil spirits. Clichés are prophylactics against the complexity and intensity of direct experience, tools used to distance ourselves from reality, but this photograph brings love near enough that we can feel its hot breath.

 

Emmet Gowin, Edith, 2004 (Rain Droplets in a Web). Gold- toned salt print on gelatin coated paper. Collection of Emmet and Edith Gowin. © Emmet and Edith Gowin, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery.

Behind the Scenes of Emmet Gowin at the Morgan Library and Museum

Joel Smith as told to Alexandra Pechman

29 May 2015

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; and aerial views of environmental devastation. In 2013, Aperture copublished a long-awaited survey publication, Emmet Gowin, in conjunction with a related exhibition organized by Fundación Mapfre, Madrid. On May 22, the Morgan Library and Museum opened Hidden Likeness, a show of Gowin’s photographs from throughout his career paired with selections he made from the museum’s vast holdings of ancient Near Eastern seals, medieval books, music manuscripts, and prints and drawings, as well as photographs. Online editor Alexandra Pechman spoke with Joel Smith, Richard L. Menschel Curator and Department Head, Photography, during a tour of the exhibition during its installation in early May. In June, Aperture Foundation Members at the Patron level will have a private tour of the exhibition led by Smith. What follows are a few selections from Smith’s commentary on how the Gowin show came together. 

 

Rhipha flammans. August, 2008, La Fortuna, Chiriquí Province, Panama.

Emmet Gowin’s Stunning Celebration of the Lowly Moth

ANDREA K SCOTT

3 SEPTEMBER 2017

The moth doesn’t enjoy the same charmed reputation as its lepidopteran cousin, the butterfly. With a handful of exceptions—the Japanese movie monster Mothra, a moody late work by van Gogh—moths are dismissed as pests, waging war on our sweaters when they’re not dive-bombing the lights. The insects even got a bad rap from Jesus: in the Sermon on the Mount, Heaven was praised for being moth-free. But with his kaleidoscopic project “Mariposas Nocturnas,” the American photographer Emmet Gowin does for the moths of Central and South America what the influential German duo Bernd and Hilla Becher once did for the water towers of Western Europe, transforming an apparently lowly subject into riveting art.

 

Edith, 1963
Photo by Emmet Gowin

Emmet Gowin:
Loving the Problem

The telephone rang in a Pennsylvania home last month and was answered by Edith Gowin, known to many as the subject of her husband’s most striking photographs.

“Emmet is deep down in the basement, but I’ll run and get him for you,” she said. On the other end of the line, the caller paused, genuinely unsure if she was speaking plainly or in metaphor, as Emmet Gowin is famous for the lyricism and poetry of his imagery and writing.

Emmet Gowin / Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson

Edith, Chincoteague Island (Virginia), 1967 ©Emmet Gowin, Courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

EMMET GOWIN

MAY 14 - JULY 27, 2014

FOUNDATION HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON

For me, pictures provide a means of holding, intensely, a moment of communication between one human and another.

From May 14th to July 27th 2014, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson will hold an exhibition of the American photographer Emmet Gowin. This important retrospective is showing 130 prints of one of the most original and influential photographer of these last forty years. This exhibition shows on two floors his entire career: his most famous series from the end of the sixties, the moths’ flights and the aerial photographs. The exhibition organized by Fundación MAPFRE in collaboration with Fondation HCB is accompanied by a catalogue published by Xavier Barral edition.

Emmet Gowin shares stories through photography

 

Edith
Photo by Emmet Gowin

Artist Emmet Gowin shares stories through photography

Posted on October 08, 2014 by Laura Brentrup

By KOURTNEY KAWANO (for The Dartmouth)

October 7, 2014

Few people have heard of — yet alone seen — water treatment pollution caused by paper mills. Even fewer have seen such damage from the sky and called it art. Yet for world-renowned photographer and current Montgomery Fellow Emmet Gowin, a certain fascination and peculiar sense of beauty comes in the circular blossoms of tropical hues that explode from the seemingly serene water.

Edith / Nine Portraits by Emmet Gowin

 

Edith, Danville, Virginia
1978

Edith

Nine Portraits by Emmet Gowin

This portrait (Edith, Danville, Virginia, 1978) is one from a series Gowin made of his wife and their family over more than three decades. In the tradition of Alfred Stieglitz’s famed photographs of Georgia O’Keeffe and Harry Callahan’s photographs of Eleanor Callahan, Gowin has created a collective portrait of his wife Edith, revealed in different moments, situations, and ages, that transcends any single depiction of her likeness. Here Edith’s parted legs add an erotic charge to the portrait, while her downward gaze and unabashed pose convey a confidence in her role as muse and an intimate trust in the photographer-subject relationship.

Edith, Ruth and Mae, Danville, Virginia
1967