“EDITH, CHINCOTEAGUE, VIRGINIA, 1967”: This work is among those committed to the Princeton University Art Museum by world renowned photographer, fine artist, and Princeton University Professor Emeritus Emmet Gowin. (Gift of Alexander D. Stuart, Class of 1972, and Robin Stuart in memory of Peter C. Bunnell)

The Princeton University Art Museum recently announced that world renowned photographer, fine artist, and Princeton University Professor Emeritus Emmet Gowin has committed his archive to the museum. The Emmet Gowin Archive is the latest addition to the museum’s holdings of artist archives, already notably strong in the area of photography. Gowin’s archive joins those of notable photographers Clarence H. White, Ruth Bernhard, and Minor White.

Made possible by the generosity of Gowin and his wife Edith — who has been Gowin’s muse, partner, and spouse for 60 years — the Gowin Archive spans six decades and holds thousands of objects, including more than 650 signed, finished photographs; approximately 500 unsigned test prints; approximately 7,000 rolls of film; approximately 7,000 contact sheets; approximately three handmade photographic albums; approximately three book maquettes, including photographic prints; additional photographic and biographical materials; and more than 50 photographs by other artists, including Sally Mann, Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, and Walker Evans, among others.

Museum Director James Steward said, “I have long felt that Emmet is one of the essential photographers of our time. Since coming to Princeton it has been a personal passion that Emmet’s archive — the full record of his artistic life — should come to Princeton, where he taught with such impact for so many years. I cannot adequately express my gratitude to Emmet and Edith for making this happen.”

Altogether, the archive — which will continue to grow as Gowin produces new works — amounts to the largest and most definitive group of photographs and records by the artist, who joined the faculty of Princeton University’s Visual Arts Program in 1973, teaching regularly from the museum’s extensive photographic holdings. Gowin was recruited to Princeton by Peter C. Bunnell, then the inaugural David Hunter McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art and subsequently director of the art museum. Gowin said, “For years, Peter and I were a team, in love with photography as a way of learning and growing one’s perception.” Gowin taught at Princeton for 36 years until his retirement in 2009.

Early in his career, Gowin was inspired by the work of Robert Frank, whose advice Gowin sought as an undergraduate student at the Richmond Professional Institute in Richmond, Via. Encouraged by Frank, Gowin entered the Rhode Island School of Design to study under the photographer Harry Callahan, who became his mentor and encouraged the young Gowin to photograph the life surrounding him. In this effort Gowin excelled, imbuing his early photographs with emotion.

Gowin’s earliest mature works, from the early 1960s, are depictions of his wife, whom he married in 1964. Photographing her in black and white, Gowin returned to his partner — and later, their children — as a subject throughout his career, often with an intimacy that flouted the standards of the time.

After the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens in Washington State, Gowin turned his attention to aerial photography, examining the surface of the Earth through series that captured at once the objective facts of landscape formations and the emotional power they wield over viewers. Later works have explored nuclear test sites, tropical ecosystems, and the chemo-petrol industries of the Czech Republic and the agricultural landscape of Granada.

“I feel deeply grateful to know that my archive will be held at the Princeton University Art Museum, an institution that offers so much to the students of the University. In the wonderful 36 years I taught at Princeton, I regularly walked my classes over to the Art Museum for exhibitions or to see photographs in the study room with Peter Bunnell,” said Gowin. “It is gratifying to know my archive will be housed at this new museum for Princeton, ready to serve future generations of students, researchers, and a public I will never know, into the future beyond what I can see.”