Adger Cowans

(plastic crinkling) - Take it outta this sleeve.

They were throwing a little girl up with a blanket on the beach.

And I got real close to the edge of the blanket, and I shot this picture and it reminded me of Icarus.

The first job, real job that I got paid for was to do a cover of Louis Armstrong for Theatre magazine.

(jazz music) I went to Jazz, Newport Jazz in 1961, with my two little Leicas and no money.

(laughs) And I photographed the Newport Jazz Festival.

So then I got paid, that was like, oh wow.

you're a professional now, you gotten paid.

(laughs) My name is Adger Cowans.

I started my life as a musician, and that's what I thought I was gonna do.

But then photography came in.

(laughs) Everything in life, that's flowing past you is important.

And that's what I wanted.

I wanted those moments of life, flowing past me.

Whether it was movie stars, whether it was people walking down the street, whether it was an abstract, no matter what it was.

If I had a feeling here in my heart then it was important to me to do it.

If I was photographing a person, I wanted to get them to look at me, or to look at the camera.

I wanted to capture part of who they were and the eyes do that better than anything else.

(jazz music ends) I was a news carrier, I was a paper boy.

So I was reading the papers while I was carrying.

So I was pretty up on what was going on in the world.

And the things that, you know, upset me was about racism.

It still upsets me, about black people getting hung and killed and shot.

It was just, it was very, It got me, it gets me today.

They would look at the work, They would see the work, my agent would take the work, and they would see the work and they would wanna hire me.

And then when I would show up, (laughing) they say, "Oh, Jesus.

We so sorry, "somebody just took that job."

So I took all that racism, and rejection, and everything, And I put it in my work.

That's one of the big things I learned from Gordon Parks was to take negative energy, and turn it into positive power.

(drumming) See the way I grew up, I didn't have a problem with about, who I was, or what I could do, I never had that problem.

I never saw myself as other, or different, or because I was Black I was not as good as.

I never, because I had a lot of loving growing up in my family.

I think the basic thing about racism, it's not gonna change until white people change it, they made it.

Racism is a white person's problem, white people's problem.

They have to step up to the plate and say, "Well, we're not gonna put up this anymore."

People have to realize, where did life start?

It didn't start in Mississippi.

Racism didn't start in America.

Black people's history didn't start in America.

Everybody that is a human being was born on the continent of Africa.

Every human being.

The gene pool of human beings started in Africa.

Okay, yeah.

I wanted to do something with my hands, and I wanted to do and make images.

I always have, even in my photography, I wanted to make images that haven't been seen before.

I wasn't educated, with a degree in painting.

It was a desire to make something with paint.

I have this exhibit at Fairfield University.

It's not actually a retrospective, it's just a look at my work over a period of time.

I don't know what it means, I really don't.

People say, "Well, what do you want your legacy be?"

I don't know anything about a legacy.

You know, it'll be what it is.

It'll be what the people make it.

I can't make my legacy, I don't even know what that is.

All I wanna do is the work, and it'll be whatever it'll be.

Ooh, I like that.