Adger Cowans American, b. 1936

Adger Cowans (b. 1936) is a painter, photographer and filmmaker whose career spans more than six decades. Cowans studied photography at Ohio University and became one of the first African American students to graduate the field in 1958. He later pursued training at the School of Motion Picture Arts and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. His eye for light and composition was sharpened through his early work with Gordon Parks at LIFE magazine and his career as a film still photographer on more than thirty Hollywood productions with directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Sidney Lumet and Spike Lee.

Early in his career Cowans pioneered a distinctive approach to painting by employing combs, sticks, serrated edges, electric drills, found objects, perforated screens, as well as patterned surfaces of crystal to apply, transfer and manipulate paint. These experimental techniques, used to scrape, push, fling and layer pigment, resulted in abstract compositions of remarkable depth and complexity. Rather than using paint to render images, Cowans treated the paint itself as the subject: a material to be sculpted, moved, and illuminated. His approach quietly resonated within the work of other artists who would later adopt similar tools and techniques. Cowans’ pioneering vision remains uniquely his own.

In 1963, Cowans became a founding member of the Kamoinge Workshop, a collective of Black photographers committed to portraying Black life with dignity and depth. Members included, among others, Louis Draper and Roy DeCarava. The community thrives today and in 2020 The Whitney and The Getty museums held Working Together: The Photographers of The Kamoinge Workshop, a retrospective celebrating the group. Cowans is currently the president of Kamoinge Workshop and has held that position for over 10 years. Similarly, in 1978, Cowans joined the AfriCOBRA collective who worked to foster and promote paintings of the “Black aesthetic.”

Cowans’ work has been exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum of Harlem, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and Harvard Art Museums, among others. He has taught photography at Wayne State University, the University of Michigan, and the Cleveland Institute of Arts and his work has been published in several magazines including Essence, Ebony, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Life, Time, and Modern Photography. Today, he continues his photography and painting from his studio in Connecticut.