[5] When he was two his family moved to Chincoteague Island, where he spent much of his free time in the marshes around their home drawing animals and plant life.
During his first year in college he saw a catalog of the Family of Man exhibit and was particularly inspired by the works of Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
[5] About this same time he met his future wife, Edith Morris, who had grown up about a mile away from Gowin in Danville.
While earning his MFA, Gowin studied under influential American photographers Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind.
In 1980 Gowin received a scholarship from the Seattle Arts Commission which provided funding for him to travel in Washington and the Pacific Northwest.
Beginning with a trip to Mount St. Helens soon after it erupted, Gowin began taking aerial photographs.
Gowin retired from teaching at Princeton University at the end of 2009[8] and lives in Pennsylvania with his wife Edith.
Gowin has acknowledged that the photographs of Eugene Atget, Bill Brandt, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Alfred Stieglitz, and especially Harry Callahan and Frederick Sommer have influenced him.
"[10] In an essay for the catalog for an exhibition of his work at Yale University, writer Terry Tempest Williams said "Emmet Gowin has captured on film the state of our creation and, conversely, the beauty of our losses.