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Harley Cowan

Cascadia

Landscape at Cloud Cap, Mount Hood, Oregon. This photo was shot with a 1954 Rolleiflex Automat while snowshoeing at timberline. 120 format silver gelatin.

Awards

Black & White Photo Contest

2022

Nominee

Film/Analog

Professional

Cascadia

Landscape at Cloud Cap, Mount Hood, Oregon. This photo was shot with a 1954 Rolleiflex Automat while snowshoeing at timberline. 120 format silver gelatin.

About Artist

Harley Cowan

I am a documentary photographer. My work centers on disappearing history and cultural heritage. I am an architect and use that training to tell visual stories about design, structure, engineering, materials and history. In 2022, I sailed with The Arctic Circle International Expeditionary Residency as artist-in-residence where I shot and developed large format film aboard the tall ship Antigua in Svalbard. In 2020, I was granted the Van Evera Bailey Fellowship by Architecture Foundation of Oregon to photograph Oregon’s contributions to architectural heritage. In 2019, for my work documenting the Manhattan Project, I became the 38th member of the Atomic Photographers Guild, an international collective of artists founded in 1987 dedicated to making visible all facets of the nuclear age. In 2020, and again in 2021, I was the artist-in-residence to the University Club of Portland. In 2018, I was the National Park Service artist-in-residence for Oregon Caves National Monument and was honored by the Vernacular Architecture Forum with their Access Award at their national conference in Alexandria, Virginia. In 2017, I photographed the engineering systems of B Reactor, the world's first full-scale nuclear reactor which produced plutonium for the Trinity Test and the Fat Man bomb used in war over Nagasaki, Japan as well as the remnants of settlements displaced through eminent domain by the Hanford Engineer Works. I have produced work for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) collection in the Library of Congress and other federal, state and county archives. My photography has exhibited nationally with the National Park Service, Port of Portland, PDX International Airport, Oregon Historical Society, Camerawork Gallery, Lightbox Gallery, Allied Arts, and is supported by Oregon’s Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC). My work has been featured in both photography and historic preservation publications including Diffusion, Field Notes, This Place, and Washington State Magazine. I have lectured for the Portland Art Museum, Society of Architectural Historians, Docomomo Oregon, University of Oregon, and the Pacific Northwest Preservation Field School. My photographs are included in SAH Archipedia, an online encyclopedia of historic sites. A graduate of Washington State University, I was a member of the Professional Advisory Board for WSU’s School of Design & Construction for eight years. Early in my career, I spent six years working in nuclear industry. My studies also took me to Far Eastern State Technical University in Vladivostok, Russia.

Photographic Areas of Focus

Film/Analog, Fine Art

Location

United States of America

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