Ralph Gibson is one of the most distinctive voices in American photography of the 20th and 21st centuries. The most recent monograph Ralph Gibson. Photographs 1960 – 2024—published by Taschen—brings together a carefully curated selection of his photographic work spanning more than six decades on over 500 pages.
»During these years, my feeling for contrasts certainly developed, as did the idea of a strong camera presence«, Ralph Gibson approaches his own work in a statement written on January 16, 1999 for his series San Francisco—, referring in particular to the influence and work of his father, who worked as an assistant director for Hitchcock and whom he often visited on shoots. A first step towards the visual discoveries he was to make as a young photographer.
Gibson’s work is characterized early on by an intuitive interplay between reality and poetics—The banal is stylized into an aesthetic event. These are not mere snapshots, but very personal, visually condensed impressions.
In this sense, the book is also divided into series, because for Gibson there is a philosophy behind each one. An approach he was introduced to by Dorothea Lange, whom he worked for as an assistant starting in 1960. Lange is regarded as the founder of documentary photography, and Gibson describes her as a person of few words but seemingly all the greater powers of observation—, for example when she criticizes Gibson’s work with the words: »The problem is that you have no starting point.« It wasn’t until he began working on the series The Somnambulist that he truly grasped the wisdom of her admonition.
»Since then, I have always worked from a starting point. Each photograph is related to a theme under discussion, to his series, to a book«, he says, explaining his approach with the words: »This leaves an infinite number of possibilities, but the chaos subsides.«
Regardless of the motifs—his pictures are characterized by cut-outs, fragments and spaces in between. Whether he is dealing with architectural details, typographic fragments or the female silhouette—the interplay of light, form and suggestion lends his pictures a formal clarity. His later series in color also remain true to this approach. Whether it is facades, reflections, urban structures or surreal-looking detailed studies—Gibson uses the visual as an expression beyond the nameable.
Ralph Gibson. Photographs 1960 – 2024 is more than a retrospective or a ramble through the work of a photographer. Gibson’s introspective visual language – reduced, graphic, poetic – takes us to the places and situations he encountered throughout his life – or that encountered him. And if that’s not enough, you can meet the photographer in person when he signs his book on Saturday, June 28, at 12 noon at the TASCHEN Store in Cologne (Neumarkt 3, 50667 Cologne). Please RSVP.
Ralph Gibson. Photographs 1960—2024
Hardcover, 21 x 27.5 cm, 2.65 kg, 552 pages
taschen.com
