Jeff Cowen (January 9, 1966 in New York City, New York) is an American art photographer. He is known for painterly silver gelatin photo murals and photo collages. Various chemical procedures, mark-making, brushwork, and post darkroom mixed media finishing techniques are often contained in his artworks.
After graduating he worked as an assistant for master American photographers Larry Clark from 1988 to 1990, and Ralph Gibson from 1990 to 1992. Clark was the assistant of W. Eugene Smith and Gibson was the assistant of Dorothea Lange.
In 2001, he moved to Paris, France. In 2005, his first monograph was published by Paris Musées.[2] That monograph contains his early New York work and his painterly Mural collages of nudes. In 2007, Cowen collaborated with filmmaker and writer Andre Labarthe founder of the Cahiers du cinéma for his exhibition called The Lotus Eaters.[3]
In 2007, Cowen located his studio in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, until he returned to live in the United States in 2023.
He was awarded the Thomas Cooke Award for Photography.[4] In 2021, Jeff Cowen was nominated and awarded the Pollock Krasner Grant for Fine Art Still Photography.
Jeff Cowen's works are included in numerous private and public collections all over the world. In 2024, his project "Provence Works" is presented in a joint exhibition by the Huis Marseille Museum for Photography[5] and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.[6] His works have been shown in Fotografiska Museum,[7] Stockholm, Sweden; Kunsthalle Bremerhaven, Germany; DZ Bank Art Collection Frankfurt, Germany; Ludwig Museum, Koblenz, Germany; Huis Marseille, Museum voor Fotografie, Amsterdam, Netherland; Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia; among others.
Self-portrait by Jeff Cowen and Csilla Szabo (diptych), 55 x 98 cm, 2011, Edition of 6
Personal life
Cowen taught photography to underprivileged, inner-city kids at LEAP between 1990 and 1994. Cowen discovered and mentored the young and brilliant illegal immigrant Dan-el Padilla[8] and helped him earn a scholarship to Collegiate School in New York City. Padilla later earned a scholarship at Princeton University where he graduated with the highest distinction and was offered full scholarship at Oxford University. Due to Padilla's illegal immigrant status, Padilla and Cowen were both featured in an article in the Wall Street Journal that highlighted some of the absurdity and rigidity of U.S. immigration laws.[9] Dan-el Padilla is currently an associate professor of classics at Princeton University.
Selected exhibitions
2024: Provence Works, Huis Marseille – Museum voor Fotografie, and Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (solo exhibition)
2024: Berlin Works, Fotografiska Stockholm (solo exhibition)
2024: Seance: Jeff Cowen’s Work in Dialogue with Hans Bellmer, Joseph Beuys, Claude Cahun, Sigmar Polke, and others. HOUSE, Berlin
2024: Jeff Cowen, Werner Knaupp, fotodiskurs, Augsburg
2023: Women’s Work, New York Historical Society Museum, New York (group exhibition)
2021: Jeff Cowen. Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow (solo exhibition)
2020: The Lives and Loves of Images. Wilhelm-Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen (group exhibition)
2019: 64 Art Works. Art Collection of The New School, New York (group exhibition)
2019: Jeff Cowen. Galerie Wilma Tolksdorf, Frankfurt (solo exhibition)
2019: Jeff Cowen 30 Works. curated by Eric Schlosser, Museum of Modern Art, Tbilisi (solo exhibition)
2018: Recent Work. Michael Werner Kunsthandel, Köln (solo exhibition)
2018: Picture Believer. The Glen Bjørnholt Collection, Oslo (group exhibition)
2018: Elèctric i llunyà. Collection olorVisual, Barcelona (group exhibition)
2017: Jeff Cowen Photoworks 2002 – 2015. Huis Marseille, Museum voor Fotografie, Amsterdam (solo exhibition)
2016: Jeff Cowen Photoworks 2002 – 2015. Ludwig Museum, Koblenz (solo exhibition)
2016: Jeff Cowen Sculpture Photographs. Michael Werner Kunsthandel, Köln (solo exhibition)
Edward Quinn (1920–1997) was born in Ireland. He lived and worked as a photographer from the 1950s, on the Côte d'Azur, during the "golden fifties" the playground of the celebrities from the world of show biz, art and business.
Robert Doisneau was a French photographer. From the 1930s, he photographed the streets of Paris. He was a champion of humanist photography and, with Henri Cartier-Bresson, a pioneer of photojournalism.
David LaChapelle is an American photographer, music video director, and film director. He is best known for his work in fashion and photography, which often references art history and sometimes conveys social messages. His photographic style has been described as "hyper-real and slyly subversive" and as "kitsch pop surrealism". Once called "the Fellini of photography", LaChapelle has worked for international publications and has had his work exhibited in commercial galleries and institutions around the world.
Guy Bourdin, was a French artist and fashion photographer known for his highly stylized and provocative images. From 1955, Bourdin worked mostly with Vogue as well as other publications including Harper's Bazaar. He shot ad campaigns for Chanel, Charles Jourdan, Pentax and Bloomingdale's.
Jean-Marc Bustamante is a French artist, painter, sculptor and photographer. He is a noted conceptual and installation artist and has incorporated ornamental design and architectural space in his works.
Albert Watson OBE is a Scottish fashion, celebrity and art photographer. He has shot over 100 covers of Vogue and 40 covers of Rolling Stone magazine since the mid-1970s, and has created major advertising campaigns for clients such as Prada, Chanel and Levis. Watson has also taken some well-known photographs, from the portrait of Steve Jobs that appeared on the cover of his biography, a photo of Alfred Hitchcock holding a plucked goose, and a portrait of a nude Kate Moss taken on her 19th birthday.
Allan Sekula was an American photographer, writer, filmmaker, theorist and critic. From 1985 until his death in 2013, he taught at California Institute of the Arts. His work frequently focused on large economic systems, or "the imaginary and material geographies of the advanced capitalist world."
Rainer Fetting is a German painter and sculptor.
Edwin Zwakman is a visual artist from the Netherlands whose works explore the interaction between reality and photography. He does this with staged photography, either in his studio or in public space. Works in the studio include a long-running series of pictures showing scale models of Dutch landscapes and interiors. And this landscape is itself a construct. By reconstructing it from memory, the artist reflects on the mentality of its makers and the way their world is represented in images. Works in public space concern themselves with iconic images from sites and events, often using fictitious United Nation operations to illustrate the workings of images in the media.
Roswitha Hecke is a German photographer and photojournalist. With content ranging from faces to places, her photographic projects explore the unfamiliar and re-examine the familiar.
Björn Dawidsson, who publishes as Dawid, is a Swedish photographer based in Stockholm.
Hans Rudolf Thull is a German artist who works in the fields of photography, collage and sculpture. He was one of the first German contemporary fine-art photographers to have his work shown in solo exhibitions in German art museums.
Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography is the oldest photography museum in Amsterdam, opened in 1999. Huis Marseille was the first photography museum in the Netherlands when it opened in 1999; the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, the Fotomuseum Den Haag in The Hague, and FOAM in a nearby building have opened since. The museum is housed in a residence built around 1665 for a French merchant, and contains 13 exhibition spaces and a restored room in Louis XIV style; the building was restored and the museum extended into the adjacent building in 2007–2013.
Alex Kempkens is a German photographer, photojournalist and computer artist. He also writes articles and curates exhibitions. Kempkens is an autodidact.
Juul Kraijer is a Dutch visual artist. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and is included in major museum collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, the Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania and the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin.
Jacques Hérold was a prominent surrealist painter born in Piatra Neamț, Romania.
Cathleen Naundorf is a contemporary artist and fine art photographer. She lives in Paris and London.
Franz Christian Gundlach was a German photographer, gallery owner, collector, curator and founder.
Heinrich Thannhauser was a German gallery owner and art collector. As an art dealer, he was one of the most important promoters of early Expressionist art in Germany.
Franz Immoos is a Swiss-Dutch object installation artist and photographer. He was born in Menziken.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
