Emmet Gowin: Photographs    Feb 14 - Mar 21, 2009

Emmet Gowin: Photographs February 14 - March 21, 2009

Pace/MacGill Gallery is pleased to present “Emmet Gowin: Photographs.” The exhibition commemorates the reprinting of Gowin’s first monograph, Emmet Gowin: Photographs (Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), by exhibiting over 40 gelatin silver prints reproduced in the book. The photographs on view represent the first body of work in Gowin’s long, varied, and distinguished career.

Following his marriage to Edith Morris in 1964, Gowin began taking portraits of his wife and extended family in Virginia. Capturing the ordinary yet intimate moments of everyday life, these photographs often resemble personal snapshots: his niece Nancy in the grass with dolls, Edith in their living room on Christmas morning, and Edith and her two sisters in the backyard. Apart from their domestic settings and familial subjects, however, Gowin’s pictures transcend documentation. Gowin’s sensitivity to the nuances of daily events coupled with formally elegant compositions imbue his photographs with particular gravity. Honest, tender, spontaneous, and humorous in tone, they are personal yet universal reflections on the close bond shared between relatives. Some of Gowin’s photographs feature images within a circular frame, a visual device discovered by chance in 1967. Allowing the camera lens to dictate the shape of the image, Gowin invites viewers to take a privileged glimpse, as if through a peephole, into his private world.

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