Jeff Cowen


Jeff Cowen is an American art photographer known for painterly photo murals and photo collages. Cowen is the first photographer to be represented by the Michael Werner Gallery Cologne since it opened in 1968.

Early life and education

Jeff Cowen was a New York University Honours Scholar in Oriental Studies. He also studied at Waseda University in Tokyo. His senior year he took a photography class with Elaine Mayes at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. During this class he made photographs of prostitution in the Meatpacking District in New York City. This work was acquired by the New-York Historical Society for their permanent collection.

Career

After graduating he worked as an assistant for master American photographers Larry Clark from 1988–1990, and Ralph Gibson from 1990-1992. Clark was the assistant of W. Eugene Smith and Gibson was the assistant of Dorothea Lange.
At age 23, Cowen's images of the Romanian Revolution appeared in: The Guardian, Tel Aviv Post, Yomiuri Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun.
Cowen studied drawing and anatomy at the Art Students League of New York and the New York Studio School.
In 2001, he moved to Paris, France.
He was awarded the Thomas Cooke Award for Photography.
In 2005, his first monograph was published by Paris Musées. That monograph contains his early New York work and his painterly Mural collages of nudes. In 2007, Cowen collaborated with filmmaker and writer :fr:André S. Labarthe|Andre Labarthe founder of the Cahiers du cinéma for his exhibition called The Lotus Eaters.
Since 2007, Cowen has lived in Berlin.
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 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.

Selected exhibitions