Ben Gibson Cowan

Born in 1958, Ben Gibson-Cowan spent his early years living at the High Rocks, the site of a dramatic sandstone outcrop of precipitous ravines and giant boulders situated near Tunbridge Wells in South East England.

It was a childhood of endless discovery and adventure spent climbing and exploring, an experience that was to lead to his love of travelling and his fascination for scenery that was visually epic and monumental.

After briefly attending a course in creative photography at the University of New Mexico, he was accepted onto a documentary photography course run by Magnum photographer, David Hurn, at Newport College of Art & Design.

In 1982, within a month of graduating he had undertaken his first freelance assignment for Time Magazine under the byline of Ben Gibson and was soon rewarded with a full time position at The Observer in London where he found himself later described as one of Britain’s leading photojournalists by France’s Photo and Italy’s Corriera della Sera.

Following on from this critical success Ben went on to work for the Sunday Times Magazine and many of the worlds leading publication covering major international stories in over 100 countries.

In 2003 while on an assignment in the ex-soviet republic of Georgia , Ben was seriously injured in a helicopter crash, an event that was to cause him to develop a radically new outlook to his life and photography.

This change in approach led Ben to create Fearful Symmetry the first body of work in his new photographic approach which will be on show at the blackShed from the 30th of September.