Peter Gowland
Peter Gowland (born 3 April, 1916 in Los Angeles) is a famous glamour photographer.
He was the son of Gibson Gowland and Sylvia Andrew, both actors. He has acted in at least 12 films, mostly none accredited. He had a small part in "Citizen Kane".
He is known for designing and building his own studio equipment.
Bibliography
- "Classic Nude Photography" ISBN 1-58428-040-9
- "Peter Gowland's New Handbook of Glamour Photography" ISBN 0-517-56898-5
http://www.carolinabreeze.com/article.php?n=324 website Updated: 2001 |
- Legendary Photographers Peter and Alice Gowland
- By Bruce Wilkins
Los Angeles, California - They certainly aren’t household names, but virtually the entire American population - and several generations at that - have seen works of art from the photography team of Peter and Alice Gowland of Southern California.
The majority of smiling beauties you have seen on countless tool calendars in garages, as well as on more than a thousand magazine covers have been taken by this couple who have been happily married for over 60 years.
The Gowlands now have a website that shows far more than hundreds of images of swimsuit models long before Victoria Secret catalogs became popular. This website shows us how and why the Gowlands have been widely described throughout the professional photography world as the couple who "took the cheese out of cheesecake."
To visit their website, click on Alice and Peter Gowland Fotos
These photos are rather tame compared with today’s standards of glamour photography. Nowadays, the "tool calendar" has become all but obsolete due to the politically correct times in which we live. But what indeed can be seen on this website is a freshness, innocence, and even joyful look at beauty that they have given to generations. No sleazy looking Britney Spears or Pink types for this couple. Nope, no heroin-chic fashion trolls for them. This is next door elegance; quiet beauty personified.
Even before Playboy’s Hugh Hefner capitalized on "the girl next door," Peter and Alice Gowland were bringing out the best in a beautiful bevy of Southern California beach girls, whether they came from Huntington Beach or from rural Kansas.
Yes, Gowland was a Playboy photographer at times, but the majority of his work came from their very own home which consisted of a swimming pool and an interesting little canyon that he fixed up as a great backdrop for a countless number of calenders.
However, any look at this couple’s life will quickly prove that beautiful girls were not the center of their existence. The true epicenter was photography as an art form itself. Yes, the pin-ups may have paid the bills, but just click onto the "Scenics" section to see just how brilliant and creative they are, regardless of what their subject matter happens to be. Or look in their "Studio" sections to see where they worked. The "Children" section containing many of their advertising photos for magazines are fantastic. The Gowlands have such depth and such range!
As described in one of the best personality stories I’ve ever read in the Los Angles Times - a piece written by Bill Pool - Gowland was not so much fascinated by beautiful women as he was by the art and challenge of photography itself. He is just as happy building his own camera as he was taking photos of the most famous actress of the day. In fact, for all those beautiful photos we see on the site, each photo was taken by Gowland with his wife by his side.
Gowland’s career actually started because of his wife’s ability to get past a quick and initial stage of jealousy. On the day before Gowland left to enter the U.S. Army Air Corps (as a photographer, of course) in World War II, he took some photos of a beautiful girl on a nearby beach.
Yes, Alice was peeved at first, but while her husband was in basic training, she sold three of the photos for $200 each. They became magazine covers and before Peter could return home from service, he had become a widely-sought-after photographer, thanks to the keen business mind of his wife. He was the talented artist and she was the talented marketer...a combination that couldn’t be beat in post-war Southern California.
This close collaboration created a very lucrative life for them, but also greatly enriched a culture at its turning point, when practically anyone could own and operate a camera, as hadn’t been the case before. Almost single-handedly, they took a niche of photography which had already garnered a reputation for distastefulness and transferred that into an elegant and sophisticated art form.
While Hollywood celebrities flocked to them and their unique live-in studio, the majority of their subjects were everyday people: the pretty girl on the beach or working the check-out line at the local grocery store.
Visiting their website is almost like entering a shrine of post-World War II Americana when the "pin-up" model still reigned supreme. Be sure to check out the "Recent Glamour" section of their website and also the "Celebrities" section which is a virtual history of Hollywood itself.
As for those of us who truly appreciate photography as an art form, the sections on how they do their work are just as enticing. Take a look at the fake rock background and waterfall system that Peter created from chicken wire, old newspapers, and gutters.
Which no doubt points out to a fact about this couple that is behind their personal and business success. Peter is the type who is just as happy building a studio prop from scratch as Alice is at selling photos to a multi-media marketing firm. They fit perfectly together and their bond became far more attractive than any of the beautiful subjects they immortalized on film. Their life together is a beautiful, true, and ever-lasting love story.
So, while Peter and Alice Gowland may not have the name recognition of those usually seen in front of their cameras, just one visit to this unique website will show that, behind the camera, they are perhaps the very best.
Obituary
- From Times Online June 2, 2010
Peter Gowland was an early exponent of pin-up photography of glamorous, scantily-clad models and movie stars that adorned the bedrooms, barrack rooms and factory floors of a generation of young men from the early 1950s.
His sultry images of young female starlets marked a new age when images of feminine beauty focused less on the elegant, demure and statuesque and more on the voluptuous, alluring and titillating.
Using his famous self-made Gowlandflex camera, he helped to launch the careers of Jayne Mansfield, Ann-Margret, Joan Collins and Raquel Welch by celebrating their siren status on the cover of magazines. In 1954 the New York Times hailed him as America’s number one pin-up photographer and his images would go on to make 1,000 magazine covers including Playboy, Rolling Stone and Modern Photography.
Part of his success was his invention of the twin-lens Gowlandflex camera, which could shoot high-quality pictures from close up in a wide format. The camera was much sought after because it weighed just 5lb giving the photographer much more room for manouvre. It would later be used by Annie Leibovitz and Yousuf Karsh.
Gowland, with his wife and assistant Alice, had pioneered a professional approach to pin-up photography that helped to turn it into a respected genre of photography - he would go on to write 26 influential books about photographing beautiful women such as "How to Photograph Women" (1953) and "In Figure Photography" (1954).
At his home in California he built a purpose built studio. A dressing room for the models had a sliding wall that opened out on to a swimming pool with exotic fauna in the background. Scaffolding was rigged up around the pool so that he could take aerial shots and water would often be poured from on high onto the model while he was taking the picture to simulate a waterfall. The models stood on wooden foot supports to allow them to stay upright for long periods. All the while, Gowland’s wife Alice would befriend them and make them feel at ease. The poolside shots were big sellers and did much to sell the image of 1950s Calfornia as a glamorous and louche playground of the rich.
As Gowland’s fame spread he progressed onto more conventional clothed portrait shots of the leading actors of the day such as Deborah Kerr and Rock Hudson.
Peter Andrew Gibson Gowland was born in Holywood in 1916 to parents who were both silent-movie actors. After his parents divorced when he was 2, Peter grew up with his father on movie sets. He developed a particular interest in the cameramen and learnt much about lighting techniques. His interest was further stimulated when his mother bought him a camera when he was 15. He gained early experience by snapping portfolio portrait shots for actors during breaks in filming and earned extra money appearing as a film extra.
He began to take pin-up pictures on Southern Californian beaches one of which was of his future wife, Alice. They went on their first date on the day that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 and eloped to Las Vegas two weeks later. Soon afterwards Gowland was drafted into the US Army and towards the end of the war in Europe he was stationed in Germany to run a US Army Air Force photo lab. Meanwhile, back in California his wife found success in selling his pin-up pictures and when he returned from war service in 1946 they set up a professional studio.
He is survived by his wife and two daughters.
Peter Gowland, pin-up photographer, was born on April 3, 1916. He died March 17, 2010, aged 93
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