After completing a course in business administration, Emmet Gowin (Danville, Virginia, 1941) began his artistic training in 1961 at Richmond Professional Institute (Virginia). In 1966 he enrolled in a postgraduate degree program at the Rhode Island School of Design (Providence) directed by Harry Callahan, who became his mentor. In the early 1960s his work received critical acclaim through several exhibitions including a show with Ansel Adams, who he admired, at MoMA in New York in 1971.

Through his attentive and unhurried gaze, Gowin has created a body of work that encompasses images ranging from the intimate to the universal. The photographer belongs to the tradition of artists who portray their families through the years—mainly his partner—in the style of Nicholas Nixon, among others. Also interested in the changes that occur in the landscape, nature occupies an important place in his work. Within this genre, Gowin has produced aerial photographs on numerous occasions, as reflected in the exhibition Changing the Earth, which toured several North American institutions in 2002 and 2003.

The photographer has received numerous awards such as a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974 and two National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1977 and 1979. From 1973 until his retirement in 2009 Gowin was a professor of photography in the Visual Arts Program at Princeton University (New Jersey).