Emmet Gowin: Changing the Earth [Hardcover]

Jock Reynolds (Author), Philip Brookman (Author), Terry Tempest Williams (Author), Russell Lord (Author)

Book Description

Series: Yale Art Gallery | Publication Date: June 1, 2002

Emmet Gowin has been taking aerial photographs of the landscape in the United States, Mexico, Czechoslovakia, Asia and the Middle East for over 20 years. In his most compelling photographs, one witnesses how man's footprint has visually scarred and continually altered the earth's surface. This volume, published in conjunction with a touring exhibition of Gowin's photographs, focuses on images created after 1986. That was the year Gowin began to extend his aerial photography explorations in America by recording images of military test sites, missile silos, ammunition storage and disposal facilities, coal mining, pivot irrigation, offroad motor traffic and more. The work also surveys his more recent works, which focus on other regions of the world, including the battlefields of Kuwait, new golf courses in Japan and the chemo-petrol industries of the Czech Republic. In this volume, Jock Reynolds provides an overview of Gowin's aerial photography and places it in the context of his earlier work and that of such photographers as Carleton Watkins, Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams and Frederick Sommer. There is an essay by Philip Brookman who illuminates Gowin's work in the Czech Republic, while an essay from Terry Tempest Williams discusses Gowin's images from the American West, especially in his Nevada Test Site series.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Some of Emmet Gowin's black-and-white aerial photographs look almost like abstract expressionist paintings or etchings until captions like "Weapons Disposal Trenches," "Off-Road Traffic Pattern" and "Effluent Holding Pond" make clear the concrete implications of these weirdly beautiful formations. Changing the Earth, which accompanies the celebrated photographer's first traveling exhibition in ten years, documents man-made incursions in the natural landscape. The mostly aerial views show strip mines, power stations, munitions storage facilities and golf courses in the U.S., Czech Republic, Japan and Israel. Editor Jock Reynolds, director of the Yale University Art Gallery, offers an overview of Gowin's work and includes an interview with Gowin by Corcoran Gallery curator Philip Brookman and an essay by environmental activist Terry Tempest Williams (Red).
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gowin's stunning aerial photographs of the earth, of landscapes gouged and poisoned by man in the service of war, mining, and agriculture, exist somewhere between color and black and white, the microscopic (many images look cellular) and the panoramic, the abstract and the undeniably real. These are bird's-eye views of rivers, deserts, mountains, and wheat fields, of Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation, bomb disposal craters in Utah, a huge toxic water treatment facility in Arkansas, strip mines in the U.S and the Czech Republic, and a staggering series of the vast and haunted Nevada Test Site. Gowin bears witness to restricted and violated places unknown and unseen by most people, and he does so with such tender and loving attention to composition, detail, and tone the viewer feels as though he or she is looking at photographs of the scarred body of a loved one. An interview with the artist and essays by Reynolds, director of the Yale University Art Gallery, and environmental activist Terry Tempest Williams affirm the lyrical beauty and sense of suffering and compassion that Gowin's unique and prayerful photographs evoke. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 164 pages
• Publisher: YU Art Gallery; 1St Edition edition (June 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300093616
• ISBN-13: 978-0300093612
• Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 11.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #964,687 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Documenting Ruinous Relations With The Land, June 5, 2002

By 

Dr Lawrence Hauser (NYC, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Emmet Gowin: Changing the Earth (Hardcover)

Like a great deal of aerial photography (Bradford Washburn's naturalistic mountain work immediately comes to mind in this connection), Emmet Gowin's meticulously detailed portfolio depicting man's ambition writ large upon the surface of our planet can often be 'read' as much as abstract art as documentary record. As art, this series of images of a wounded planet is so deceptively compelling it is easy to become lost in the sensuousness of the aesthetic moment Gowin repeatedly creates and forget that the subject matter being systematically explored is intrinsically disturbing and of concern. Indeed, the experience of finding so much beauty in landscapes of man-made desolation and ruin is unnerving. Yet it is undeniable that from a distance the patterns on the Earth made by irrigation pivots, toxic chemical ponds, missile burial trenches, mining pits, and numerous other manifestations of human 'development' without limits are endlessly unique and dramatic. Paradoxically, it is precisely this nexus of visually stimulating, geometrically intricate imagery generated in the context of wanton exploitation and destruction of the land that sustains the narrative and aesthetic power of Changing The Earth. One is absorbed in the beauty of the photography just long enough to catch sight and become painfully aware of the pervasive, intensely consequential, problem that demands attention and thought. Thus lessons for the future abound in the pages of this volume! One day our way of taking the Earth for granted by first depleting its resources for immediate gain and then dumping what is no longer wanted or useful wherever is convenient, will be seen as the opulent conceit and obscene luxury that it surely is. Until that day, studies like Changing The Earth bare witness to our collective folly, greed and irresponsibility.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning beauty, April 24, 2003

By 

Stuart Murdoch "everything in photography is ... (Melbourne Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Emmet Gowin: Changing the Earth (Hardcover)

This book despite it's somewhat horrific subject matter has a beauty so deep and profound it restores my faith and interest in Black and White image making. Beautifully printed it is a book that any budding black and white landscape photographer should own.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Emmet Gowin: Changing the Earth, April 7, 2008

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David Carlson (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Emmet Gowin: Changing the Earth (Hardcover)

[ [ASIN: 0300093616 Emmet Gowin: Changing the Earth] ]
I had seen the show of Emmet Gowin's photographs at the Corcoran and was moved by the haunting beauty of the images. After being reintroduced to the work I decided to buy the book for myself and I am glad I did. It allows me to spend more time with Gowin's images and contemplate the many layers of realization and feeling locked into the photographs. Even if we didn't know or recognize the source the work we would still be haunted by the natural and human made melancholic patterns of line, space and color of the photographs themselves.
David Carlson