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Ralph Gibson, la Légion d’honneur pour le plus Français des Américains | Nautes de Paris
11 juin 2018 Thierry Bigaignon nous reçoit par une soirée pluvieuse dans sa Galerie de photographie ouverte dans l’hôtel de Retz, rue Charlot (Paris 3e), voici deux ans. Le photographe Ralph Gibson était ce soir là sous les feux de la rampe. Bravant une pluie torrentielle, tous les invités étaient venus partager un moment privilégié avec l’homme l’artiste, l’ami. La ministre de la Culture Françoise Nyssen était attendue. Elle devait remettre par délégation du président de la République la Légion d’honneur au photographe. |
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Le lundi 11 juin dernier, Françoise Nyssen, actuelle ministre de la Culture, remettait les insignes de Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur au talentueux photographe Ralph Gibson. Pour cette grande occasion, ce dernier offrait à la France l’ensemble de son travail réalisé dans notre beau pays. Un cadeau d’une valeur inestimable…
Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres en 1986, Médaille d’excellence Leica en 1988, prix « 150 Years of Photography » de la Photographic Society of Japan en 1989, un premier doctorat honorifique en beaux-arts de l’Université du Maryland en 1991, Grande Médaille de la Ville d’Arles en 1994, un second doctorat honorifique en beaux-arts de l’Ohio Wesleyan University en 1998, Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres par le gouvernement français en 2005 et récompensé du Lucie Award pour l’ensemble de sa carrière en 2008… Une carrière couronnée de succès, à la hauteur de l’immense talent de ce grand monsieur qu’est Ralph Gibson
Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres en 1986, Médaille d’excellence Leica en 1988, prix « 150 Years of Photography » de la Photographic Society of Japan en 1989, un premier doctorat honorifique en beaux-arts de l’Université du Maryland en 1991, Grande Médaille de la Ville d’Arles en 1994, un second doctorat honorifique en beaux-arts de l’Ohio Wesleyan University en 1998, Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres par le gouvernement français en 2005 et récompensé du Lucie Award pour l’ensemble de sa carrière en 2008… Une carrière couronnée de succès, à la hauteur de l’immense talent de ce grand monsieur qu’est Ralph Gibson
Why a Master Photographer went Digital after 55 years
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THE RENOWNED FILM photographer Ralph Gibson was lying in his shrink’s office in lower Manhattan a few years back, brooding. FedEx had knocked on his door that morning, delivering a digital camera the company Leica asked him to try out. But Gibson, in his mid-seventies, wasn't sure he wanted to: He'd been shooting analog for 55 years. "I don't know what to do with this," he said. But, suspending his skepticism, Gibson took the camera outside, pointed it at a manhole cover and snapped a photo. Just as he did, a bicycle zipped by, casting dramatic, spoked shadows across the pavement within the frame. “I looked at the display on the back of the camera and thought, ‘That looks like it could have been taken by me,” he says.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE |
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Book Review: The Black TrilogyJuly 19, 2018
Grant Faulkner, editor of 100 Word Story, describes the genre of flash fiction as “one part story, one part poem”—a narrative with plot, broken by “absences,” that may feel, at times, “almost spectral, haunting what’s been told.” If ever a photographer met this ephemeral standard, Ralph Gibson would be the one. I met Gibson in the usual, unspectacular way: standing in line to have a book signed. He was manning photo-eye’s table at AIPAD this year, inscribing copies of The Black Trilogy, a shadowy omnibus of his three most groundbreaking monographs: The Somnambulist (1970), Deja-Vu (1972), and Days at Sea (1974). At seventy-nine, Gibson’s startling gunmetal blue eyes have lost none of their gleam and certainly none of their aim. On the title page of my copy, “Ra” and “Gib” appear in a semi-legible lunge. I exited the line, but on my way out, I thought: even in the name, plot and absence. READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE |
From Flesh to Stone: The Photography of Ralph GibsonIn Days at Sea, the third book in his Black Trilogy, Ralph Gibson included a photograph of a man’s leg draped across a graffiti-covered bollard in Corsica. It is no normal leg. The black pants are fashioned from cloth rich enough for the pinstripes to remain visible in spite of the fabrics darkness. By the time your eyes get to the knee, the fabric is an impenetrable black, of the kind you sec in Manet’s toreadors, or in Motherwell’s Spanish Elegies. The black is incisive enough to cut a line through the water that forms the background of the photograph. Put another way, it is so resolutely articulated that it could be collaged onto the paper’s surface. The water has the texture of a mezzotint. Below the cuff is a while silk sock, hot with optic intensity, a quality set off by the gleam of the slip-on the man wears on his foot. In truth, the man is a pimp, although that doesn’t matter. What matters is the impeccable drama and clarity of the image, its fusion of textures and tonalities. It is classic Gibson, an improbable visual intercourse between the casual and the composed.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE |
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By the time Ralph Gibson paid $4,000 to publish his first photography book, “The Somnambulist,” in 1970, he owed nine months’ rent at the Chelsea Hotel and two of his three Leicas were in pawn. He was 30, and he’d spent the three previous years — in his words — “constantly very, very broke,” reading Jorge Luis Borges, watching French New Wave films and meticulously crafting his surrealist collection of photographs at a time when art photography was not a viable commercial endeavor.
Nonetheless, it was the beginning of a long and successful career. READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE |
Listening to the Photographs of Ralph GibsonBy Alan Behr | Paris, 1 May 2018
When you have what, in photography, could be called celebrity status and have held that honor for close to half a century, staying fresh, to say nothing of hoping to best yourself, can surely be a challenge. One of the interesting things about Ralph Gibson (and there are too many of those to cover here) is that he has, during that time, maintained a consistency of vision and execution, mostly in black and white but also in color, and he has managed to create a body of work that has appeared au courant during every phase along the way. READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE |
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New York : Political Abstraction by Ralph Gibson
at Mary Boone Gallery September 15th, 2015 Political Abstraction is the name of a recent series by Ralph Gibson of color and black and white photographic diptychs, exhibitied in Mary Boon Gallery, New York, through October 31st, 2015. In these works the viewer experiences several simultaneous visual motions dealing with the migration of color and shape across seemingly simple imagery. READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE |
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L’ambivalence de Ralph GibsonNovember 22nd, 2014
Ralph Gibson devient une étoile reconnue au faîte du ciel de la photographie. Une quarantaine de livres plus tard, il se trouve à Montréal cette semaine pour présenter une exposition de ses oeuvres qui prend l’allure d’une mini-rétrospective. READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE |
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artnet Asks: Photographer Ralph Gibson
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August 5th, 2014
Ralph Gibson studied photography while in the United States Navy before attending the San Francisco Art Institute and working as an assistant to both FSA photographer Dorothea Lange from 1961 to 1962 and filmmaker Robert Frank on two separate films. Working primarily with the Leica camera, Gibson is most recognized for overlaying elements of film narrative and mystery onto the Surrealist subject of the female body. Fascinated with books, Gibson started the publishing house Lustrum Press in 1970 and has since published over 40 books, including Somnambulist and State of the Axe. Gibson is a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France (only given to those who have made significant contribution to the arts) and his work has been displayed in more than 150 venues worldwide. He lives and works in New York. READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE |
Ralph Gibson's new book “MONO,” which features images taken with the Leica M Monochrom, was released on December 11
at the Leica Store Lisse. Also announced at the event was the exclusive, limited edition Leica M Monochrom "Ralph Gibson."
at the Leica Store Lisse. Also announced at the event was the exclusive, limited edition Leica M Monochrom "Ralph Gibson."
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Tuesday January 7, 2014
Ralph Gibson's new book “Mono,” which features images taken with the Leica M Monochrom, was released on last month at the Leica Store in Lisse. Also announced at the event was the exclusive, limited edition Leica M Monochrom "Ralph Gibson."
SEE THE ARTICLE HERE |
Legendary Photog Ralph Gibson Puts Images in Motion ... With His Own Music
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Tuesday April 23, 2013
Next week at the Palm Springs Photo Festival, the legendary fine-art photographer Ralph Gibson will be leading a workshop in photographing the nude—a subject he’s abundantly familiar with. Gibson is perhaps best known for his fragmentary and furtive photographs of the human figure—the black-and-white images, built around bold light and dark shadow, are instantly recognizable to the legions of admirers who collect his prints and the more than 40 books he has published. |
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DAS ÄLTESTE THEMA DER KUNSTGESCHICHTE
"Mit "Nude" hat der Taschen-Verlag dem US-Fotografen Ralph Gibson einen monumentalen Bildband gewidmet. art sprach mit Gibson über die Venus von Willendorf, die Intimität der Bilder und surrealistische Erotik. FULL ARTICLE HERE (In German) |
NEW YORK-based photographer Ralph Gibson is returning to Sydney for the first time in 20 years with an exhibition of his distinctive black-and-white work.
His photographs have been shown in more than 150 institutions - including New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Australian National Gallery - during his 50-year career and are shot exclusively on film, using a Leica 35mm camera. Gibson focuses on architecture and the human form, and is well known for his embrace of the abstract, as demonstrated in San Francisco, pictured. "I exist on a few bits of order extracted from the chaos of reality," says the artist, whose exhibition Ralph Gibson - 50 Years is at Sydney's Point Light Gallery until November 11. Gibson will also give a one-hour keynote lecture at the Art Gallery of NSW tomorrow, discussing key images from his career and explaining his rejection of the use of digital photography. |
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Review: At High Museum, photographer Ralph Gibson’s mysteries of visual severance |
As much as any American photographer of the generation that came to artistic maturity in the 1970s — a generation in the thrall of the dissimulations with which so-called straight photography is uniquely capable — Ralph Gibson has built a career from a preoccupation with the artistic possibilities of visual severance. The High Museum of Art’s current show, “Quartet: Photographs by Ralph Gibson,” on view through January 22, surveys that preoccupation as it has taken shape over more than 40 years.
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Come to Bangkok and
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An exhibition at Le Meridien, Bangkok, titled ''A New Perspective on Photography: A Look through Bangkok'', is the result of a three-day workshop with renowned lensman Ralph Gibson and nine photographers from Thailand, Cambodia, India, China and Hong Kong.
''I was able to speak to the photographers equally, in the same boat,'' said Gibson about leading the workshop, an initiative by the hotel chain to support emerging creative minds and give hotel guests exposure to new insights and perspectives. ''Though maybe I've been in the boat longer.'' The young photographers had been invited to learn Gibson's techniques for shooting street scenes, architecture, sculpture and night photography, and to learn about camera handling and lenses. From March 19 to 21, they toured local attractions such as the Grand Palace, the Golden Mount and street markets by day and night to capture the city. FULL ARTICLE |
artdaily.org
AMSTERDAM.- Kahmann Gallery presents the sales exhibition of the world renowned American photographer Ralph Gibson (1939, USA) as a special collaboration with Duncan Meeder, owner of Foto Henny Hoogeveen/ Leica and Transcontinenta to celebrate the launch of Gibson’s latest book Mono. Kahmann Gallery has the worldwide premiere of this exhibition, which opened today (December 12) and which will travel in 2014 on to all five continents.
Ralph Gibson’s love affair with Leica started in 1961 at the age of 22, when he got hold of his first Leica camera. He was already trained as a photographer in the US Navy and San Francisco Institute of Art, before working as a photojournalist. He soon abandoned this though, and started to pursue more personal projects. In 1961-62 he worked as an assistant for the legendary Dorothea Lange, before working with the equally celebrated Robert Frank on several films. Since then, he has built up on illustrious career, spanning over five decades.
For Gibson, photography isn’t about capturing a special event or a certain moment, but about making the most insignificant subject into a work of art. As he says himself: ‘…what I wanted to do, is be able to make my perception of anything become the subject itself. And for this reason I’ve attempted to take pictures of simple things, you know, like a cardboard box, or a chair, or a spoon. Very humble objects. I’m not terribly drawn towards the epic event. I’d like to make something totally insignificant into an object of importance, by virtue of how photography works.’ Gibson’s extensive body of work is consequently filled with a wide variety of themes, but what connects all these ideas all together is a wholly personal point of view, recognizable in every single photograph, be it a corner of a table or a nude portrait.
Gibson is a prolific producer of photo books and has produced forty monographs to date. His work has been included in the collections of over 150 museums, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Getty Museum in Los Angeles, The Victoria & Albert in London and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
A world tour has been scheduled that will include a show at the famous 798 art district in Beijing. All prints in the Mono exhibition are for sale. The Mono book is also available for the duration of the exhibition at Kahmann Gallery.
Ralph Gibson’s love affair with Leica started in 1961 at the age of 22, when he got hold of his first Leica camera. He was already trained as a photographer in the US Navy and San Francisco Institute of Art, before working as a photojournalist. He soon abandoned this though, and started to pursue more personal projects. In 1961-62 he worked as an assistant for the legendary Dorothea Lange, before working with the equally celebrated Robert Frank on several films. Since then, he has built up on illustrious career, spanning over five decades.
For Gibson, photography isn’t about capturing a special event or a certain moment, but about making the most insignificant subject into a work of art. As he says himself: ‘…what I wanted to do, is be able to make my perception of anything become the subject itself. And for this reason I’ve attempted to take pictures of simple things, you know, like a cardboard box, or a chair, or a spoon. Very humble objects. I’m not terribly drawn towards the epic event. I’d like to make something totally insignificant into an object of importance, by virtue of how photography works.’ Gibson’s extensive body of work is consequently filled with a wide variety of themes, but what connects all these ideas all together is a wholly personal point of view, recognizable in every single photograph, be it a corner of a table or a nude portrait.
Gibson is a prolific producer of photo books and has produced forty monographs to date. His work has been included in the collections of over 150 museums, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Getty Museum in Los Angeles, The Victoria & Albert in London and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
A world tour has been scheduled that will include a show at the famous 798 art district in Beijing. All prints in the Mono exhibition are for sale. The Mono book is also available for the duration of the exhibition at Kahmann Gallery.