“I never lost interest in the gestures or the faces of this dearest of families. It was here that I came of age and found my first true subject.” For almost thirty years, photographer Emmet Gowin captured personal and tender portraits of his wife, Edith Morris, and her extended family. The series, taken between 1966 and 1994, bears witness to the lives and relationships that shaped the artist over time. Through Gowin’s lens, images of Edith in her bedroom or on a ladder in the yard, of Reva and her sisters, children playing, lounging outside, and funeral onlookers, are captured with tangible care and compassion, reflecting the artist’s close relationship with these subjects. Now, Baldwin Street: Photographs 1966 – 1994, named after the street on which they lived, is currently on display at Pace Gallery in New York.
Born in Virginia in 1941, Gowin was raised in a close-knit religious family whose values and relationship informed much of his creative practice. After earning a BFA in Graphic Design from the Richmond Professional Institute in 1965 and later an MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design, Gowin began turning his camera toward the residents of Baldwin Street. He says of the series: “Through Edith and her family, Baldwin Street became the centre of my spiritual universe. For over fifty years, those houses and yards, along with Reva’s garden, all the children, the aunts and uncles, that small but intensely vivid and inspiring world, was in my mind the true centre of the world.” This reverence is clear throughout the exhibition. There’s the joy and abandon of childhood games, with water spurting out of balloons and games played on grassy fields, which are naturally endearing. But perhaps more arresting are the unassuming moments that often go without notice, like people seated at the kitchen table or a woman brushing her hair. It is in these shots that Gowin’s true love of this setting really shines through.
Although the display at Pace Gallery focuses on Gowin’s ability to capture the domestic, his oeuvre expands far beyond private spaces. His photographs evolved from Baldwin Street to aerial vistas of nuclear testing sites and 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; the pivot-irrigation agriculture of Kansas; the chemo-petrol industries of the Czech Republic; and the Spanish province of Granada. At first glance, these works could not be further from the intimate shots of Baldwin Street, but in reality, there’s a strong and unbreakable throughline to his oeuvre. Gowin reminds audiences of the complexities of personhood and communities, how we are inextricably bound to each other, and to the Earth.
In an artist profile for the International Center of Photography, Lisa Hostetler perfectly encapsulates what makes Gowin’s photographs so enduring: “Drawing on his continuous study of philosophy, physics and spirituality, as well as his deep appreciation for the symbolic power of photography, Gowin’s work consistently reminds us that we need connections – both physical and emotional – in order to survive.” It is this profound reflection on relationships that grounds the portrait of a single family in a universal human experience – and makes Gowin one of the most beloved contemporary photographers.
Baldwin Street: Photographs 1966 – 1994 is on display at Pace Gallery, New York until 25 April: pacegallery.com
Words: Emma Jacob
Image Credits:
1. Emmet Gowin, Edith, Danville, Virginia,1991 GELATIN SILVER, gelatin silver print 6-11/16″×6-11/16″ (17 cm×17 cm), image 10″×8″(25.4 cm×20.3 cm), paper © Emmet Gowin, courtesy Pace Gallery.
2. Emmet Gowin, Reva and Edith, Danville, Virginia, 1970 GELATIN SILVER gelatin silver print 6-9/16″×6-9/16″ (16.7 cm×16.7 cm), image 10″×8″(25.4 cm×20.3 cm), paper. © Emmet Gowin, courtesy Pace Gallery.
3. Emmet Gowin, Ruth in Her Mother’s, Kitchen, Danville, Virginia, 1968 GELATIN SILVER gelatin silver print 6-5/8″×6-9/16″ (16.8 cm×16.7 cm), image 10″×8″(25.4 cm×20.3 cm), paper. © Emmet Gowin, courtesy Pace Gallery.
4. Emmet Gowin, Darlene, Danville, Virginia, 1974 PIGMENT pigment 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, courtesy Pace Gallery.
