Jeff Cowen

"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."

Jeff Cowen (1966) was born in New York City, and has lived in Paris and Berlin. Upon graduation in Oriental Studies as from New York University and Waseda University in Tokyo in 1988, he worked as an assistant to Ralph Gibson and Larry Clark, as he photographed intensively on the streets of New York.

Cowen’s artistic approach was influenced and altered by his study of drawing and painting. He works with the figure, landscape, abstraction and still life. The artist is interested in what he calls the non-moment, the point in time just before or after something has happened.

Cowen is constantly testing the boundaries between photography, painting, drawing and sculpture. He works on thick silver based paper, which he cuts, collages and attacks with various chemicals and specialized darkroom techniques.

Jeff Cowen’s works are included in numerous public and private collections. In 2019, the private collection MAP from Bremen acquired a substantial body of Cowen’s work. His works have been shown in Kunsthalle Bremerhaven, Germany; DZ Bank Art Collection Frankfurt, Germany; Ludwig Museum, Koblenz, Germany; Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia; among others.

In 2021, Jeff Cowen was nominated and awarded the Pollock Krasner Grant for Fine Art Still Photography. In 2024, Cowen will show his latest project, Provence Works at the Huis Marseille Museum for Photography and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.