Personal Visions

Master American photographer Adger Cowan's predominantly black-and-white photography is collected in Personal Vision: Photographs, his monograph of original images taken over the past forty years. Cowans is one of the great unrecognized photographic luminaries of our time, and this magnificent book is a fitting and long-awaited tribute to his immense talent. Personal Vision follows Cowans's photographic evolution from Navy photographer to apprentice to the great Gordon Parks to history-shaping documenter of 1960s Harlem to a high-profile Hollywood portrait photographer with a larger-than-life clientele list, including Al Pacino, Jane Fonda, Katherine Hepburn, and Mick Jagger. Cowan's images embody 1960s documentary style, street journalism, portraiture and self-portrayals, still-lifes, and experimental work. Personal Vision captures the evolution and expansive talent of a single photographer who had access to worlds as diverse as Harlem street life and high-fashion models, and who continues to photograph today with gusto and imagination, creating one of the major archives of a living American photographer, seen here for the first time in an expansive collection.