The Emmet Gowin Archive

Made possible by the generosity of the world-renowned photographer, fine artist, and Princeton University Professor Emeritus Emmet Gowin and his wife Edith—who has been Emmet’s partner for sixty years—the Gowin archive is the largest and most definitive group of his photographs and records. The archive—which will continue to grow as Gowin produces new works—includes approximately 650 finished prints, 500 test prints, 7,000 contact sheets, 7,000 rolls of film, handmade photographic albums, book maquettes, and more than 50 photographs by other artists, including Sally Mann, Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, and Walker Evans, among others.

Gowin, who joined the faculty of Princeton University’s Visual Arts Program in 1973, teaching regularly from the Museum’s extensive photographic holdings, made his earliest mature works, black and white photographs of Edith, in the early 1960s. Gowin returned to his partner—and later, their children—as a subject throughout his career, often with profound intimacy. After 1980, Gowin turned his attention to aerial photography in series that captured at once the objective facts of landscape formations and the emotional power they wield over viewers. Later works exploring nuclear test sites and tropical ecosystems round out a comprehensive representation of Gowin’s life’s work as an artist and teacher.