Ralph Gibson

Santa Claus, St. Martin

1992

Ralph Gibson is an American master photographer best known for literally inventing a new language of photography in the 1970s. Gibson was born in Los Angeles on January 16, 1939. Ralph Gibson builds a narrative meaning through contextualization and surreal juxtaposition. He studied photography while in the US Navy and then at the San Francisco Art Institute. He began his professional career as an assistant to Dorothea Lange and went on to work with Robert Frank on two films. Gibson has maintained a lifelong fascination with books and book-making. Since the appearance in 1970 of the Somnambulist, his work has been steadily impelled towards the printed page. To date, he has produced over 40 monographs. His photographs are included in over 150 museum collections around the world and have appeared in hundreds of exhibitions. Gibson has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Exchange in Berlin, a New York State Council of the Arts Fellowship and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The Rencontres d'Arles festival presented his work in 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1989 and 1994. His book Syntax received a mention for the Rencontres d'Arles Book Award in 1983. He was decorated as an Officier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and appointed Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. His awards include the Leica Medal of Excellence Award, “150 Years of Photography” Award from the Photographic Society of Japan, a Grande Médaille de la Ville d'Arles and the Lucie Award for lifetime achievement. Gibson also received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the University of Maryland and a second honorary doctorate from the Ohio Wesleyan University. He has worked exclusively with Leica for almost 50 years. Gibson currently lives in New York and travels frequently to Europe and Brazil.