After graduating from Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University) in 1965, Gowin attended the Rhode Island School of Design. While earning his MFA, Gowin studied under influential American photographers Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind.

Gowin teaches at Princeton University and lives in Pennsylvania with his wife Edith.

Gowin first gained attention with his intimate portraits of his wife and family. His almost exclusive use of a large format camera led to both optical and darkroom experiments. Using a 4×5 lens with an 8×10 camera allowed Gowin to expose the full image circle, surrounded by a dramatic vignette, in his family portraits and rural landscapes.

Beginning with a trip to Washington state soon after Mt. Saint Helens erupted, Gowin began taking aerial photographs. For the next twenty years, Gowin captured strip mining sites, nuclear testing fields, large-scale agricultural fields and other scars in the natural landscape.

Gowin received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1977 and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1979.