Emmet Gowin

To view more photos: http://photography-now.net/emmet_gowin/portfolio1.html

Emmet Gowin does not have an official but is in a number of online galleries and very well known and respected.

Explanation of Work:

Gowin first gained attention with his intimate portraits of his wife and family. His almost exclusive use of a large format camera led to both optical and darkroom experiments. Using a 4x5 lens with an 8x10 camera allowed Gowin to expose the full image circle, surrounded by a dramatic vignette, in his family portraits and rural landscapes.

Beginning with a trip to Washington State soon after Mt. Saint Helens erupted, Gowin began taking aerial photographs. For the next twenty years, Gowin captured strip mining sites, nuclear testing fields, large-scale agricultural fields and other scars in the natural landscape.

Review/interview: http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/4aa/4aa533.htm

I was not familiar with Emmet Gowin's aerial photographs. This work deals with "assaults in nature." What caught my eye were the large scale agricultural fields. He describes them as scars in the natural landscape. I found it interesting that he was making this statement in the early ninteies and so many of the senior portfolio projects, as well as mine, are dealing with this same idea of human destruction and the natural world.