Edith Emerging From Woods

Like fellow photographers Sally Mann and Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Emmet Gowin is known for photographing members of his family, especially his wife, Edith Morris. Gowin met Morris in 1961, at around the same time that he decided to abandon business school to study art. The couple married in 1964, and Morris became Gowin’s most enduring subject. Using a tripod-mounted, large-format camera and lengthy exposure times, he photographed his wife and her surroundings in exquisite detail. Though the portraits of Edith, with her penetrating gaze, feel intimate, they also offer a rare, straightforward approach to the female body. When viewed together, the many pictures of Edith offer an unflinching yet tender portrait of ageing as a natural process of life.