Background

Jeff Cowen was born on January 9, 1966, in New York City, New York, United States.

Education

Jeff Cowen entered New York University in 1985. He graduated three years later as an Honours Scholar in Oriental Studies. At the end of the education, Cowen studied photography under Elaine Mayes at the Tisch School of the Arts. In 1987, he traveled to Tokyo where he attended Waseda University.

Later, from 1994 to 1996, Jeff Cowen studied drawing and anatomy at the Art Students League of New York and the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.

Career

Early in career, at the end of the 1980s, Jeff Cowen tried himself as a taxi driver in the Meatpacking District of New York City.

As to the start of Cowen’s career as a photographer, it can be counted from his service in the capacity of an assistant to Larry Clark and Ralph Gibson in the early 1990s. During this period, he learned darkroom techniques and practiced his skills by taking street photos of New York City. It resulted in a series featuring the district’s transvestites, West 14th Street, which was acquired by the New York Historical Society for its permanent collection.

Later, the Romanian Revolutions series by Cowen were published in the Guardian, Tel Aviv Post, Yomiuri Shimbun, and Asahi Shimbun. Between 1990 and 1994, Cowen tried himself as an educator. He organized photography classes for underserved children from poor families at LEAP.

In 2007, Jeff Cowen relocated to Germany where he established a studio in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. Five years later, he signed the contract with Michael Werner Kunsthandel that has been representing his art since then.

2016 and 2017 were marked with the first major retrospectives held at the Ludwig Museum Koblenz and the Huis Marseille Museum for Photography, Amsterdam. Those same years, the private collection MAP, Bremen purchased an important body of Cowen's artworks containing the pictures from the last ten years.

Jeff Cowen has regularly appeared with his pictures at various national and international art events, including Art Basel, Art Cologne, Art Bologna, Arco, Photo Espana, LaArt Fair, Art Paris, and others. Nowadays, the photographer lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Achievements

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  Jeff Cowen is an accomplished photographer who has pushed the boundaries between photography, painting, and sculpture. Experimenting with darkroom techniques, chemicals, and color additives, he is on the cusp of the way of expressing the 3d reality through the plate analog photos.
  
  Jeff Cowen has been a recipient of the Thomas Cooke Award for Photography. He is the first photographer whose art is represented by the Michael Werner Gallery since its opening in 1968.
  
  It was Jeff Cowen who noticed and contributed to further formation of then illegal immigrant Dan-el Padilla Peralta, now a classics professor at Princeton University.
  
  Cowen's artworks are acquired by about one hundred public and private collections and institutions worldwide.
  
  In 2015, Attacus Atlas by Jeff Cowen was purchased for $7,080 at Cornette de Saint Cyr Auction House, Paris.

Works

More photos

• artwork

  • Untitled (W-Series)

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  • Untitled (W-Series)

  • Untitled (W-Series)

  • Untitled XLIV

  • SC 1

  • Untitled Berlin XIII

  • Statua 12

  • Untitled Berlin XXXV

  • Untitled Pfaueninsel 4

  • Untitled Ca l'Abat

  • Nature Morte 1

  • Nature Morte 42

  • Untitled

  • Aikusya, Diptych

Views

Quotations: "Silence can not be elucidated by what it is, only by what it is not. This is what I am after – Silence."

"There is nothing casual about a photograph for me. It is a balance. It must seem effortless and have a fabulous simplicity about it and at the same time it must have this mysterious complexity."

"I use photography as a language in order to communicate the unspeakable and the spiritual."

Connections

pupil:

Dan-el Padilla Peralta

References

• Jeff Cowen Official Website