Nancy and Dwayne, Danville, Virginia

Gowin took this picture of his niece and nephew fighting, at a moment when they had gone from anger to reconciliation. In isolating the figures against a dark ground, the childish activity becomes more complicated—evoking tensions between playfulness and aggression, masculinity and femininity. This sense of ambiguity is heightened by an element of stillness which became crucial to Gowin’s photographic approach. His view camera required careful set up and longer exposure times than a hand-held camera, at once slowing down his image-making and precisely rendering the smallest details.