McDowell is the 2013 recipient of the Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant, and has received the Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer’s Fellowship, the New York Foundation on the Arts Photography Fellowship, as well as many other artist grants. McDowell’s photographs are represented in collections at the Yale University Art Gallery, the George Eastman Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others. He is a professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Vermont. McDowell participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence Program in 1995.