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Summary

A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008, Gowin uses photography to speak about ritual, landscape, and memory. His photographs use images both captured with his camera and collected from the Internet. Gowin's work examines the human experience in moments of spiritual and physical transition, as exemplified by the series Of Falling and Floating, where figures are caught between land and sky. In 2008, he founded Tin Roof Press to publish his books on art and photography, including Maggie in 2009 and his monograph Of Falling and Floating in 2011. Gowin was raised in Newtown, PA and is the son of American photographer Emmet Gowin.

His photographs range from direct views of the sun or photographs of snow with a flash, to manipulated scenes of riverside baptisms or haunting pictures of falling bodies. In some of his work, Gowin searches for vernacular images of his given theme and manipulates them into unique prints. To create pictures of falling bodies, Gowin layered the images and then printed the photographs as small fibrous paper negatives. Afterward, they were scanned onto another sheet of paper so that the end result incorporates the entire process into the texture.

Gowin received a B.A. from Davidson College (1990) and an M.F.A. in Photography from the University of New Mexico (1996). Presently, he is Professor and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he directs photographic studies. He is represented by the Robert Mann Gallery in New York.

Career

Exhibitions
Robert Mann Gallery, New York, NY, September-October 2011
Danville Museum of Fine Art and History, Danville, VA, January-March 2008
Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, Virginia Beach, VA, July-October 2006
Vermont Center for Photography, Brattleboro, VT, June 2006
Photo Gallery International, Tokyo, Japan, June-July 2004
Light Factory, Charlotte, NC, November 2001-January 2002
Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX, May 2001
Dolphin Gallery, Kansas City, MO, April 2001
Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, PA, March-May 2000

Collections

Michener Art Museum
Corcoran Gallery of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Center for Creative Photography
The Museum of Fine Art, Houston
Carnegie Museum of Art
Virginia Museum of Fine Art

Publications

Of Falling and Floating
, Tin Roof Press, 2011
The Heaviest Flower,
Tin Roof Press, 2009
Maggie, Emmet Gowin and Elijah Gowin
, Tin Roof Press, 2008


Awards & Appointments

Awards
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 2008
Puffin Foundation Grant, 2007
Charlotte Street Foundation Award, Kansas City, MO, 2006
Fellowship 2000, Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, PA, April 2000
Light Work Residency Grant, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, May 1998

Teaching and Professional Appointments
Assistant Professor of Art and Art History, St. Mary's College of Maryland, St. Mary's City, MD, 1999
Associate Professor of Art and Art History and Director of Photographic Studies, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO

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