KATHERINE GOWMAN

Katherine Gowman (b. 1976, Detroit USA) is a Detroit based photographer specializing in ethnographic and political landscape documentation. Her work highlights overlooked political and socio-economic issues shaping urban architecture and contemporary cityscapes. Her process involves extensive research into how political and financial power influences our environments. She challenges accepted ideas about urban planning and questions conventional assumptions about the growth and development of neighborhoods. In her work, Gowman draws attention to the corrosive impact of urban planning on demographical ideals. She ​shows how cities’ structures can hinder efficiency and hamper equality.

Functioning on dual levels, her work is both personal and documentary. Her journalistic approach to photography invites viewers to question how their environments are manipulated and segregated. Yet her photographs also serve as artworks that express her personal aesthetic and represent her subjective experiences in the cities that inspire her. As a whole, her work is compelling evidence of troubling but neglected realities that require our attention.

Gowman is dedicated to her personal projects which include: “The Other America'', a educational and interactive platform using photographic and empirical evidence to address Detroit's economic divide. “Topography of Segregation”, an interactive website exposing the segregating impact of relined maps drawn by the Federal Home Owners Loan Corporation from 935-1939. “Border Infrastructure'', photo documentation and research of the US/ Mexican borderlands and its continued fortification. These personal projects have been exhibited in group shows in Europe alongside photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher who she greatly admires.

Her freelance photography work includes clients such as the University of Zurich, ETH, Leibstadt Nuclear Plant, Architecture historian Stanislaus Von Moos, David Adjaye, SeArch, Olu Company, Detroit Institute of Arts, Pride Source, College for Creative Studies, Michigan Radio/NPR, MOCAD & Detroit Art Week. Her work has been widely published, as well as a book collaboration with the University of Zurich. In 2019 -2020 she collaborated with the Detroit Institute of Arts to document their African American Art contributors for the “Detroit Collects” exhibition and catalogue.