{
"data": {
"id": 154858,
"accession_number": "1989.435",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Edith, Christmas Morning, Danville, Virginia, 1971. Emmet Gowin (American, 1941-). Gelatin silver print; image: 20.3 x 25.2 cm (8 x 9 15/16 in.); matted: 35.6 x 45.7 cm (14 x 18 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Museum members in 1989, 1989.435",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Edith, Christmas Morning, Danville, Virginia",
"creation_date": "1971",
"creation_date_earliest": 1971,
"creation_date_latest": 1971,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"America"
],
"technique": "gelatin silver print",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Photography",
"collection": "PH - American 1951-Present",
"type": "Photograph",
"measurements": "Image: 20.3 x 25.2 cm (8 x 9 15/16 in.); Matted: 35.6 x 45.7 cm (14 x 18 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.203,
"height_inch": 8,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.252,
"width_inch": 9,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.9375
},
"matted": {
"height": 0.356,
"height_inch": 14,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.457,
"width_inch": 18,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Written in pencil on verso: \"2 [circled] 20 of 20 EG.\"; \"Edith: Christmas Morning, / Danville Virginia 1971 Emmet Gowin [signed] 1984 / 7 1/2 x 9 1/2 overmat 14 x 15 1/2\"",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 311479,
"title": "Contemporary American Photographers",
"description": "Contemporary American Photographers. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 18, 1992-January 3, 1993).",
"opening_date": "1992-11-18T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 311875,
"title": "Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 24, 1996-February 2, 1997).",
"opening_date": "1996-11-24T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Emmet Gowin's first important photographic achievement was a body of work created from the mid-1960s through the early 1970s. The photographs were deeply personal images of his wife, Edith, and their two children, Elijah and Isaac, as well as other family members. In Edith, Christmas Morning, Danville, Virginia, Gowin captured the turmoil\u2014physical and emotional\u2014of Christmas morning. His wife surveys both the wreckage of wrapping paper and boxes and the delight of her young sons, playing with their newly opened gifts. The image is given an almost mystical quality by Gowin's dramatic use of light and shadow. The circular format was created by attaching a lens intended for a smaller camera onto his 8-x-10-inch view camera.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79942550"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "E. H. T. \"The Year in Review: Selections 1989.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 77, no. 2 (1990): 38-78.",
"page_number": "p. 71, no. 95",
"url": "www.jstor.org/stable/25160106"
},
{
"citation": "Hinson, Tom E. \"Contemporary American Photographs: An Exhibition.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 79, no. 9 (1992): 306-51.",
"page_number": "p. 348, no. 31, repr. p. 330",
"url": "www.jstor.org/stable/25161375"
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 187",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1989.435",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Gift of Museum members in 1989",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 154858,
"creators": [
{
"id": 147,
"description": "Emmet Gowin (American, 1941-)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Emmet Gowin American, 1941-\r\n\r\nFor Emmet Gowin (born in Danville, Virginia), the intimate bonds of family are at the root of human experience. His early black-and-white photographs of his wife, Edith, their two sons, Elijah and Isaac, and Edith's extended family in Danville focused on the cycle of life, how people relate to the land, and the ritual importance of the everyday. These themes pervade his life's work.\r\n\tAfter graduating from the Richmond Professional Institute (B.A. in graphic design, 1965), Gowin immersed himself in photography. He studied with Harry Callahan at the Rhode Island School of Design (M.F.A., 1967) and visited Walker Evans in New York, who praised Gowin's student work and exchanged prints. Gowin also became acquainted with Frederick Sommer and his philosophical and aesthetic ideas, a friendship that has endured.\r\n\tIn 1973 Gowin began to photograph the landscape and has since traveled the world, working extensively in the British Isles, Italy, Jordan, and Israel. Since the early 1980s, he has made aerial photographs of geographic areas that have been altered by either natural or man-made forces: the industrial-scale agriculture of the Great Plains, the U.S. -- Mexico border, the nuclear test area of Yucca Flats, and Kuwait after the Gulf War. Publications of his work include Emmet Gowin/Photographs (1976), Petra (1986), and Emmet Gowin/Photographs (1990).\r\n\tIn addition to teaching at the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio (1967-71) and Princeton University (since 1973), Gowin has taught workshops and lectured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. A major traveling retrospective of his work was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1990), and he has had one-person exhibitions at the Dayton Art Institute (1968), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (with Robert Adams, 1971), George Eastman House, Rochester (1971), the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1971, 1973, 1983), the Photo Gallery International, Tokyo (1989, 1993), Espace Photographie Marie de Paris (1992), the American Centers at Fokuoka, Osaka, Kyoto, Saporo, Yokohama, and Tokyo (1992-93), and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (1995).\r\n\tAmong his achievements are fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1974), the National Endowment for the Arts (1977, 1979), and the Pew Charitable Trust (1995), as well as the Friends of Photography Peer Award (1992). Gowin lives in Newtown, Pennsylvania. A.W.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1941",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1990-01-29T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1971,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1971",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": "20",
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-01 06:51:31.538000"
}
}