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Emmet Gowin, Index 19, May 2008, Panama, 2008, digital inkjet print, 14" × 9-5/8" (35.6 cm × 24.4 cm), image, 19" × 13" (48.3 cm × 33 cm), paper © Emmet Gowin

Emmet Gowin

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Details:

b. December 22, 1941

Emmet Gowin received a BFA in Graphic Design from the Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University) in 1965 and an MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1967.

He served on the faculty of Princeton University as a professor of photography in the Visual Arts Program from 1973 until his retirement in 2009, and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1974) and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (1977, 1979).

For six decades, Gowin has contemplated humanity's relationship to the natural world with visual wonderment. His photographs have evolved from intimate portraits of his wife Edith Morris and extended Virginia family, to aerial vistas of nuclear test sites, to scientific surveys of tropical ecosystems and their dependent biodiversity. He has created formally abstract, luminous compositions of the volcanic devastation of Washington’s Mount St. Helens, the chemical contamination of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, pivot irrigation agriculture in Kansas, the chemo-petrol industries of the Czech Republic, and most recently, the Spanish province of Granada.

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Emmet Gowin, Off Road Traffic Pattern along the Northwest Shore of the Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1988, toned gelatin silver print, 9-3/8" × 9-1/2" (23.8 cm × 24.1 cm), image, 11" × 14" (27.9 cm × 35.6 cm), paper © Emmet Gowin

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Emmet Gowin, Siena, Italy, 1975, gelatin silver print mounted to board, 7-5/8" × 9-5/8" (19.4 cm × 24.4 cm), image and paper, 13-3/8" × 15" (34 cm × 38.1 cm), mount © Emmet Gowin

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Emmet Gowin, Edith, Chincoteague, Virginia, 1967, gelatin silver print, 6-1/4" × 6-1/8" (15.9 cm × 15.6 cm), image, 10” × 8” (25.4 cm × 20.3 cm), paper © Emmet Gowin

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Emmet Gowin, Nancy and Dwayne, Danville, Virginia, 1970, gelatin silver print, 6-1/4" × 6-1/4" (15.9 cm × 15.9 cm), image, 8" × 10" (20.3 cm × 25.4 cm), paper © Emmet Gowin

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Emmet Gowin, Sedan Crater, Northern End of Yucca Flat Looking South, Area 10, Nevada Test Site, 1996, toned gelatin silver print, 14" × 14" (35.6 cm × 35.6 cm), image, 16" × 20" (40.6 cm × 50.8 cm), paper © Emmet Gowin

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Emmet Gowin, Nancy, Danville, Virginia, 1969, gelatin silver print, 5-1/2" × 7-1/4" (14 cm × 18.4 cm), image, 8" × 10" (20.3 cm × 25.4 cm), paper © Emmet Gowin

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Emmet Gowin, Alluvial Fan, Natural Drainage near the Yuma Proving Ground and the Arizona-California Border, 1988, toned gelatin silver print, 9-5/8" × 9-1/2" (24.4 cm × 24.1 cm), image, 11" × 14" (27.9 cm × 35.6 cm), paper © Emmet Gowin

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Emmet Gowin, Old Hanford City Site and the Columbia River, Hanford Nuclear Reservation, near Richland, Washington, 1986, toned gelatin silver print, 9-7/8" × 9-7/8" (25.1 cm × 25.1 cm), image, 14" × 11" (35.6 cm × 27.9 cm), paper © Emmet Gowin

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Emmet Gowin, El Khazneh from the Siq, Petra, Jordan, 1985, gelatin silver print, 9" x 9" image, 14" x 11" paper © Emmet Gowin

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Emmet Gowin, Subsidence Craters, Northern End of Yucca Flat, Nevada Test Site, 1996, toned gelatin silver print, 13-7/8" × 13-7/8" (35.2 cm × 35.2 cm), image, 20" × 16" (50.8 cm × 40.6 cm), paper © Emmet Gowin