Steidlville

“… in 1964, I entered into a family freshly different from my own. I admired their simplicity and generosity, and thought of the pictures I made as agreements. I wanted to pay attention to the body and personality that had agreed out of love to reveal itself.”

Following his marriage to Edith Morris in 1964, Emmet Gowin began taking memorable portraits of his wife and extended family in Virginia. Emmet Gowin Photographs presents a collection of 68 of these images, accompanied by a short personal text by the photographer. Inspired by the work of Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Harry Callahan and Frederick Sommer, Gowin approaches his subjects with a reverence for the relationship between photographer and sitter. Although his photographs often resemble home snapshots, he aspires to take pictures that succeed as more than just family records, in some cases allowing the camera lens to dictate the circular shape of the image.

Emmet Gowin Photographs was first published in 1976 by Alfred A. Knopf, New York. For the production of the 2009 edition the photographs were scanned at Steidl’s digital darkroom from vintage prints. Without changing the size of the images, the book format was slightly increased.