One of the first images that impacted Emmet Gowin and motivated him to pick up his father’s camera when he was just 16 was a landscape by Ansel Adams: Burnt Stump and New Grass (California) from 1935. Despite being best known for the intimate photographs of his family, nature also holds a privileged position in his work. In 1980, after the volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens, he became interested in aerial photography of natural environments. Through volumes and abstract forms, Gowin depicts the violent changes suffered by the landscape as a result of the eruption.

He made aerial photographs for other projects such as Photographs: Landscape in the Nuclear Age, picturing the nuclear reserve in Hanford, Washington State, and Aerial Photographs, focusing on North American landscapes devastated by erosion and human interventions. Likewise, outside of the United States he has produced works on humankind’s footprint as well as certain natural phenomena affecting the landscape, for example in his photographs of the archeological sites of Petra, Jordan. Comarca Guadix-Baza is one of the aerial photographs he made in 2012 of the northern part of the province of Granada (Spain). In it, one can appreciate Gowin’s interest for the abstract forms generated by the region’s rugged landscape.