Ralph Gibson
Ralph Gibson is an American photographer, artist, and writer born in Los Angeles on January 16, 1939.
Gibson was educated at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he developed his grounding in visual art. Working in English, he has pursued a career that spans photography, writing, music, and journalism — a range that marks him as a practitioner resistant to any single professional category.
Over the course of his career, Gibson has received several significant honors in recognition of his work. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, one of the more competitive distinctions available to American artists and scholars. The Royal Photographic Society also recognized him with one of its awards. From France, he received two of that country's foremost cultural distinctions: the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and the Knight of the Legion of Honour, the latter representing one of the highest honors the French Republic confers.
Gibson's work, situated across photography and the broader visual arts, reflects a practice that engages with multiple creative disciplines simultaneously — photography remaining the persistent center of his output alongside his activities as a musician and writer.
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Quotes by Ralph Gibson
Ralph Gibson's insights on:
I’m interested in producing truncated shapes in proportion to the frame and composition, shapes that are preferably luminous. I’m not interested in the full-figure. I want to abstract forms.
Even though fixed in time, a photograph evokes as much feeling as that which comes from music or dance. Whatever the mode - from the snapshot to the decisive moment to multi-media montage - the intent and purpose of photography is to render in visual terms feelings and experiences that often elude the ability of words to describe. In any case, the eyes have it, and the imagination will always soar farther than was expected.
I'm interested in producing truncated shapes in proportion to the frame and composition, shapes that are preferably luminous. I'm not interested in the full-figure. I want to abstract forms.
I believe that the medium of photography prevails entirely as an act of faith in the souls of those who love and practice it. And so every photograph becomes another subtle variation on the theme of the medium itself.
The French have a different take on photography than Americans do. They consider photography to be absolutely parallel to literature. That often makes for a deeper perception of the work.
I embrace the abstract in photography and exist on a few bits of order extracted from the chaos of reality.
I have been a photographer all my life....and have made photographs of many things and for many reasons. But one thing that becomes more and more apparent is that I am simply only as good as my next photograph. That's the one that counts the most....For this reason I find it a delight to face a new day, and to develop that new roll of film. It's a great way to live.
It occurs to me that at the beginning one works passionately to learn photography. This takes years, and the craft is usually formed during this period. Then as time passes one finds oneself more in the role of serving the medium... Then, as in the example of several masters that I have been privileged to know personally, it appears that by having devoted oneself totally to the medium, one becomes photography.
When I was working with Robert Frank, he told me that there was absolutely no relationship between cinema and photography. I challenge that. Surely what you know as a photographer must impact how you set up your shots.