Emmet Gowin (born 1941) is an American photographer

Emmet Gowin (born 1941 in Danville, Virginia) is an American photographer. He first gained attention in the 1970s with his intimate portraits of his wife, Edith, and her family. Later he turned his attention to the landscapes of the American West, taking aerial photographs of places that had been changed by humans or nature, including the Hanford Site, Mount St. Helens, and the Nevada Test Site. Gowin taught at Princeton University for 25 years and has influenced an entire generation of new photographers through his own work and his academic career.

Life and career

Gowin was born in Danville, Virginia. His father, Emmet Sr., was a Methodist minister and his Quaker mother played the organ in church. When he was two his family moved to Chincoteague Island, where he spent much of his free time in the marshes around their home. At about age 12 his family moved back to Danville, where Gowin first showed an interest in art by taking up drawing. When he was 16 he saw an Ansel Adams photograph of a burnt tree with a young bud growing from the stump. This inspired him to go into the woods near his home and draw from nature. Later, he applied what he learned from his early years wandering in the woods and marshes to his photography. A student of his said "Photography, with Emmet, became the study of everything."

After graduating from high school he attended the Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University). During his first year in college he saw a catalog of the Family of Manexhibit and was particularly inspired by the works of Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson. About this same time he met his future wife, Edith Morris, who had grown up about a mile away from Gowin in Danville.[3] They married in 1964, and she quickly became both his muse and his model. Later they had two sons, Elijah (now an emerging photographer in his own right) and Isaac.

Some of his earliest photographic vision was inspired by Edith’s large and engaging family, who allowed him to record what he called "a family freshly different from my own." He said "I wanted to pay attention to the body and personality that had agreed out of love to reveal itself." In 1965, Gowin attended the Rhode Island School of Design. While earning his MFA, Gowin studied under influential American photographers Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Three years later he was given his first solo exhibition at the Dayton Art Institute. In 1970 his work was shown at theGeorge Eastman House and a year later at the Museum of Modern Art. About this same time he was introduced to the photographer Frederick Sommer, who became his lifelong mentor and friend.

Gowin was invited by Peter Bunnell in 1973 to teach photography at Princeton University. Over the next 25 years he both taught new students and, by his own admission, continually learned from those he taught. At the end of each academic year he asked his students to contribute one photograph to a portfolio that was open to critique by all of the students; he intentionally included one of his own photographs as a reminder that, while a teacher, "he was just another humble student of art."

Gowin received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974, which allowed him to travel throughout Europe. He was also awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1979 and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts in 1994.

In 1980 Gowin received a scholarship from the Seattle Arts Commission which provided funding for him to travel in Washington and the Pacific Northwest. Beginning with a trip to Mount St. Helens soon after it 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.

In 1982 the Gowins were invited by Queen Noor of Jordan, who had studied with Gowin at Princeton, to photograph historic places in her country. He traveled there over the next three years and took a series of photographs of the archaeological site at Petra. The prints he made of these images were the first time he introduced photographic print toning in his work.

Gowin retired from teaching at Princeton University at the end of 2009[4] and lives in Pennsylvania with his wife Edith.

Style and aesthetics

Gowin has acknowledged that the photographs of Eugene Atget, Bill Brandt, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Alfred Stieglitz, and especially Harry Callahan and Frederick Sommer have influenced him.

Most of his early family pictures were taken with a 4 X 5 camera on a tripod, a situation in which he said "both the sitter and photographer look at each other, and what they both see and feel is part of the picture." These photos feel both posed and highly intimate at the same time, often capturing seemingly long and direct stares from his wife or her family members or appearing to intrude on a personal family moment. Gowin once said that "the coincidence of the many things that fit together to make a picture is singular. They occur only once. The never occur for you in quite the same way that they occur for someone else, so that in the tiny differences between them you can reemploy a model or strategy that someone else has used and still reproduce an original picture. Those things that do have a distinct life of their own strike me as being things coming to you out of life itself."

In an essay for the catalog for an exhibition of his work at Yale University, writer Terry Tempest Williams said "Emmet Gowin has captured on film the state of our creation and, conversely, the beauty of our losses. And it is full of revelations."

Elinor Carucci (b. 1971) is a photographer born in Israel and working in NY

Elinor Carucci was born (1971) in Israel and lives and works in New York.

Carucci's work is an intimate glimpse into her life and that of her parents, husband and children. As Carucci explains:

"The camera is, in a sense, both a way to get close, and to break free. It is a testimony to independence as well as a new way to relate to the world."

Her initial photographs often depicted her mother and now as a mother herself she frequently depicts her own children.

Solo exhibitions in London include The Photographers Gallery in 1998 and Gagosian Gallery in 2003. 

Carucci was included in The Naked Portrait 1900-2007 at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2007 and inPictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2011.

Elinor Carucci

As Elinor Carucci's photographic diary continues to evolve, she takes us into the details of her surroundings, her family life and her home. By narrowing the way she looks at things, the more she is able to see. Carucci takes the viewer into a very private part of her world. Marks on a body from bed sheets after waking, the imprint of a zipper on skin looks familiar and beautiful, a few dark hairs on an upper lip reveal a flaw in an otherwise perfect and sensual mouth. Carucci photographs the stitches on a finger, and it becomes eerie and striking, mimicking the pattern of eyelashes from a very separate and quiet photo. All are the results of reality, living and seeing, capturing accidents with artful intention.

Since her gallery debut in 1997, Carucci's reputation has grown internationally with solo exhibitions in London, Frankfurt, Prague, and Jerusalem. Her work has been extensively published and collected by numerous institutions and private collectors.

Background

At first, Carucci photographed her mother, father and brother, and then later the extended family. At a certain stage, she began shooting her mother and herself as a series of pictures, serving as work subjects. Black and white posed photos posed: a repeat of previous scenes, a repetition with something missing.

The second stage of her word was shooting in colour. No advance warning, no cooperation. To snap, to develop, to check and over again. The frame became flexible and hospitable. What she had previously considered improvisation, marginal, came close to the centre and became the theme itself.

Even as a permanent presence, which one got used to, the camera generated situations. Not because it had a personality, but because it aroused an attitude, by documenting a situation and in that way competing with the image of the photographed object in relation to itself. It was like facing a mirror: When you look into it, you tauten your face muscles slightly, change your statement - and that's what happens in front of a camera. She found herself and her family discovering themselves, a discovery of nuances, but nevertheless a discovery. Also the process of selecting and sorting was similarly problematic: to chose the "pretty" or the "right" photo, the "aesthetic" or "authentic" one, how to distinguish between them, how to integrate them.

Another problem: how much to interfere in the pictured situation? Does altering the lighting create a different situation? Does a bit of cleaning up or changing clothes before photographing keep one faithful to the reality of what one is trying to document? Maybe some of the photos are what you would like things to be and not how they really are?

The preferred situation: Don't think, just shoot, just shoot.

Quotes

"Sometimes, photographing came before the logical understanding and my consciousness regarding life around me. Sometimes, it confused my world of pictures with the real world. On other occasions, the camera "saw" what was happening in front of it before I did. Like someone else standing aside, the photos said: Pay attention, there's something here which you did not grasp by yourself - ?wake up!

Surpassingly, through the small details, the photographs began to extend beyond my family frontiers. In the "small" near me I could see the "big" the "far", and go back to observing my intimate surroundings. Differently. Taking pictures of them, through them.

My mother was the first person I ever photographed and I still take pictures of her obsessively. My mother was and is my first connection to the world, the relationship we have is a very special and ambivalent one. I used to think that the struggles and reactions from my childhood would eventually go away and my mother's power over me would dissipate, but I realize, as I get older, that it is basic and stronger than me. Only in the last few years, I began to see my mother, not only as a strong person, but also more as a human being with anxieties, weaknesses, and the natural fear of aging. It scares me. Mom has to be total security, the 'only' security. Power, beauty and femininity. Perfect. Still today, I feel that her power is unlimited and she can do anything for me, she is invincible. But when she prepared me for the world, she showed me the world through her eyes and taught me that there are things that
she cannot do for me. My mother put her lipstick on my lips and hoped that it would protect me.

I once thought that to take pictures of my mom would help me overcome the fear of time passing, but the photography only shows me the cruelty of time and even the pictures of faces without wrinkles do not comfort me."

(http://www.gallery51.com/index.php?navigatieid=9&fotograafid=29)

http://www.elinorcarucci.com