Cowin, Eileen. Eileen Cowin, Work 1971-1998. still (and all)

Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, 2000. Essays by Sue Spaid and Mark Alice Durant. Stiff illustrated wraps. Exhibition catalog, 40 pages with color illustrations.  Includes biographical information on the photographer. Exhibit at Armory Center for the Arts, Southeast Museum of Photography, and University of Maryland/Baltimore County, Fine Arts Gallery, 2000-2001. Near fine. Summary:

Eileen Cowin, Work 1971–1998: still (and all), published in 2000 by the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, California, is a mid-career retrospective catalog documenting nearly three decades of work by American photographer and video artist Eileen Cowin.

Key Summary & Highlights

• Retrospective Scope: The publication surveys Cowin’s artistic development over 27 years, tracing her trajectory from intimate early experiments in the 1970s to large-scale, cinematic photographic works and video installations of the late 1990s.

• Critical Commentary: The catalog includes critical essays by independent curator Sue Spaid and artist/writer Mark Alice Durant, which frame Cowin's contributions to contemporary conceptual photography and staged narrative.

• Staged Narratives & Cinematic Structure: The volume highlights Cowin's signature use of open-ended visual storytelling, particularly her large-scale diptychs and triptychs featuring isolated figures, deliberate gestures, and theatrical staging.

• Exploration of Media & Drama: The featured works illustrate her engagement with the conventions of mass media, cinema, television, and soap operas—blurring the lines between fiction and reality, truth and artifice, and private psychological tension and public performance.

Eileen Cowin (b. 1947)

Eileen Cowin is an influential Los Angeles-based artist and educator known for her conceptual, staged narrative photography and video installations. Born in Brooklyn, New York, she earned a B.S. from the State University of New York at New Paltz and an M.S. in photography from the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1970, where she studied under Aaron Siskind. Rising to prominence alongside the Los Angeles experimental photography scene and the Pictures Generation artists of the 1970s and 1980s, Cowin challenged traditional documentary photography through meticulously constructed tableaux—most notably in her celebrated Family Docudrama series (1980–1983). A long-time professor at California State University, Fullerton, Cowin has received multiple National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and widespread acclaim, with her work held in major public collections including the Getty Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and the Museum of Modern Art.