preview

Emmet Gowin Essay

Decent Essays

Chapter Two: Emmet Gowin
Emmet Gowin, whose photography as well as style has been created through little manipulation, will be further explored. During Gowin’s life, photography changed significantly, but he stuck to the use of the darkroom to create his photographs that are unique and visually appealing (Smith). Emmet Gowin’s photography is often influenced by artists whose names are Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, and Harry Callahan (Gowin 54). Harry Callahan, whom was Gowin’s teacher at Rhode Island School of Design, was particularly influencing for Gowin’s work (Smith; Gowin 54). Gowin likely used similar techniques to Callahan, because that is who he was taught by. Through inferences this would make it so that much of the technologies that did come out during Gowin’s life, he didn’t use …show more content…

Callahan and Evans work influenced Gowin to incorporate people into many of his photographs, including members of his family (Gowin 54). However, as Gowin puts it, “I always hope to make a picture that is more than a family record” (Gowin 54). The subject of a photograph can with recent photographic technologies be altered to look a different way. However, in Gowin’s work he didn’t manipulate the subjects, giving a much more realistic view of his family members (Padjen 34). Emmet Gowin is a photographer that uses circular formatting in a large variety of his pieces, this was something that at his time was fairly unique to him, not many other photographers before him had tried this technique, and others that did weren’t as successful as Gowin (Smith). This creates a photograph that has much of either black or white. This creates either a large amount of positive space or negative space, making the photo itself have much contrast to the background with the light or dark values in the photograph. This choice artistically is very intriguing because it is so unique, and the extent to which he uses it is different from most other artists not only

Get Access