Adger Cowans: Finding the Artist in the Work: by Hannah Sirlin

October 20, 2025
  • “The artist is in his work. That is where you find him if you want to find him. Who he is, how he feels, what he thinks—and even that is limited. The artist is a living thing. He is always changing and growing older.”
    — Adger Cowans

     

    Adger Cowans is a multi-disciplinary artist whose career spans over six decades. Best known for his powerful black-and-white photography, Cowans has also built his career around abstract and experimental practices in painting. Cowans was born in 1936 in Columbus, Ohio. He comes from a proud family legacy that includes a great-great-grandfather who was a Buffalo Soldier and a cousin, Dr. Early Sherrard, who was a Tuskegee Airman. 


    Cowans’ artistic path began with music. He earned a scholarship for trumpet performance at Capital University, though his love for photography led him to become one of the first African American graduates in photography at Ohio University, earning a BFA and continuning his education at the School of Motion Picture Arts and the School of Visual Arts in New York.

  • Adger Cowans, Three Shadows, 1960, c.

    Photography

    Three Shadows, 1960, c.

    Cowans’ career in photography brought him to work with major publications and film studios. He became the first Black still photographer in Hollywood, working on sets with directors like Spike Lee and Francis Ford Coppola. In 1958, he moved to New York to work as an assistant for Gordon Parks at Life magazine. As a mentor, Parks encouraged Cowans to use his camera in the fight against racism and violence against Black people. Cowans has been recorded to have said “I took all that racism and rejection and everything, and I put it in my work, as one of the big things I learned from Gordon Parks was to take negative energy and turn it into positive power.” Following in the footsteps of his great-great-grandfather, Cowans also served as a photographer in the U.S. Navy until 1960. 


    In 1963, he and a collective of fellow New York photographers, including Louis Draper and Roy Decarava founded the Kamoinge Workshop. The workshop played a pivotal role in the Black Arts Movement. The group came together in the spirit of friendship, seeking artistic equality and empowerment. According to the official Kamoinge website, they chose the name due to its translation from the Gikuyu language in Kenya meaning “a group of people acting together.” The name expressed their dedication to mutual support and to using photography as a powerful, independent art form—one that represented Black communities through their own eyes and lived experiences, challenging the negative portrayals often found in mainstream art, media, and culture. 

  • Adger Cowans, Untitled, 1970

    Painting

    Untitled, 1970

    Though Adger Cowans first gained recognition as a photographer, painting has been a steady part of his creative life. His painting practice emerged in the 1960s, working alongside his photography and film projects. He was known for his inventive methods, often using household tools such as combs, straws, and custom squeegees to manipulate paint. Cowans was often seen playing jazz music while creating; as he once shared, “Jazz and painting is my religion”—a sentiment that comes through in his work’s expressive, free-flowing nature.

     

    For Cowans, abstraction is not an escape but a deep engagement with the spirit, with feeling, and with a world beyond the literal. Like many Black artists who turned to abstraction after World War II, Cowans embraced form, texture, and color as the primary language of expression. As he puts it, “Painting is the subject. Color is the vision, and the vision is life.” Cowans’ works invite viewers to look inward, offering a glimpse into his emotions, thoughts, and spirit.

     

    One of Cowans’ works in the Collection, PFF600 - Untitled (1970), offers an excellent example of his approach to abstraction. Art writer and curator Chenoa Baker describes the piece as a “color field painting of green, purple, and brown tones” that are reminiscent of Aaron Douglas' palette. However, instead of depicting figures, Cowans focuses on movement and texture, enhanced by gold powder that adds depth and a rich shimmer across the surface. 

  • Legacy

    Cowans' work has been published in several magazines, including Essence, Ebony, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Life, Time, and Modern Photography, and has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum of Harlem, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Harvard Fine Art Museum, among others. He has also taught photography at Wayne State University, the University of Michigan, and the Cleveland Institute of Arts. There is currently documentary film in production about the life and work of Adger Cowans, produced by Black Art Auctions and 21st Editions. Today, Adger Cowans continues a rich photography and painting practice from his studio in Connecticut.

     

     You can see more of Adger Cowans work on his website https://www.adgercowans.com/

  • Collection Spotlights