Cowans, Adger W.

Impact on the world

After earning a photography degree from Ohio University in 1958 and serving as a U.S. Navy photographer, Cowans moved to New York and assisted Gordon Parks at Life magazine, an experience Parks later credited with sharpening Cowans’s individualist vision; he became a founding member of the Kamoinge Workshop the following year, photographing the civil rights movement and Black community life alongside fellow founders including Louis Draper, also profiled in this collection. From the mid-1960s, Cowans built a parallel career as the first Black still photographer in the Hollywood film industry, working on set for directors including Francis Ford Coppola, Sidney Lumet, and Spike Lee across films from Nothing But a Man (1964) to City Hall (1996), while his fine-art photography and paintings entered the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum. He has served as president of the Kamoinge Workshop and received the Gordon Parks Legendary Award and a 2001 Lorenzo il Magnifico career honor from the Florence Biennale of Contemporary Art.

Life & background

Born September 19, 1936, in Columbus, Ohio, Cowans earned a B.F.A. in photography from Ohio University in 1958, studying under Clarence H. White Jr., before serving as a U.S. Navy photographer through 1960. He then worked with Gordon Parks at Life magazine, joined the Kamoinge Workshop as a founding member in 1963, and built a parallel career as a Hollywood film still photographer and fine artist that continues into the present; he lives and works between New York and Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Sources

1. International Photography Hall of Fame; Encyclopedia.com; The HistoryMakers