Ralph Gibson (born January 16, 1939) is an American art photographer best known for his photographic books. His images often incorporate fragments with erotic and mysterious undertones, building narrative meaning through contextualization and surreal juxtaposition.
Gibson enlisted in the United States Navy in 1956 and became a Photographers Mate studying photography until 1960. He then continued his photography studies at the San Francisco Art Institute between 1960 and 1962.
He began his professional career as an assistant to Dorothea Lange from 1961 to 1962 and went on to work with Robert Frank on two films between 1967 and 1968.
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. In 1969 Gibson moved to New York, where he formed Lustrum Press in order to exert control over the reproduction of his work. Lustrum Press also published Larry Clark's Tulsa (1971). To date he has produced over 40 monographs, the more recent being State of the Axe (Yale University Press, 2008) and Nude (Taschen, 2009). His photographs are included in over one hundred and fifty museum collections around the world, and have appeared in hundreds of exhibitions. Including his own private museum in Busan, Korea, Goeun Museum of Photography. He has worked exclusively with the Leica M 35mm rangefinder cameras for almost 50 years.
Asked by The New York Times for the photography books that were his main sources of inspiration, Gibson recommended what he considered to be five seminal works: Eugene Atget's Vision of Paris, Walker Evans's American Photographs, Henri Cartier-Bresson's Decisive Moment, Robert Frank's The Americans and Alexey Brodovitch's Ballet.
Commissioned by Italian luxury label Bottega Veneta, Gibson photographed models Raquel Zimmermann and Mathias Lauridsen on locations in Milan for the brand's fall/winter 2013 advertisements. Gibson's Hand Through a Doorway was used on the inner sleeve of the 1979 album Unknown Pleasures by UK rock band Joy Division. A unique set with prints of the Beatles was made by Gibson in August 1966 for a proposed book for Capitol Records.
In the summer 2016, on the occasion of the opening of the Galerie Thierry Bigaignon, Gibson presented a new series of color photographs entitled Vertical Horizon.
Gibson currently lives in New York with his wife, fashion designer Mary Jane Marcasiano and travels frequently to Europe and Brazil.
Selection and sequencing of the photographs and the layout of each book were usually determined by Ralph Gibson. Each series of work, like the trilogy and Chiaroscuro, is at least accompanied by a short statement. In other publications there are explanatory texts with biographical, esthetic and also practical considerations, particularly in more recent books.
The Somnambulist. Lustrum Press, New York 1970. ISBN 0-912810-09-2.
Déjà-Vu. Lustrum, New York 1973. ISBN 0-912810-06-8.
Days at Sea. Lustrum, New York 1975. ISBN 0-912810-15-7.
Syntax. Lustrum, New York 1983. ISBN 0-912810-39-4.
L'Anonyme. Aperture/Contrejour, New York/Paris 1986. ISBN 978-0-89381-249-2.
Tropism. Catalogue accompanying the first retrospective at International Center of Photography (ICP), curated by Miles Barth, Aperture, New York 1987. ISBN 0-89381-274-9; HC: ISBN 0-893812-55-2. UK ed.: Phaidon, Oxford, ISBN 0-7148-2502-6; Italian ed.: Alinari, Florence, ISBN 88-7292-096-5 (and presumably a Japanese ed.)
À propos de Mary Jane. Cahier d'images/Contrejour, Paris 1990. ISBN 2-85949-899-0.
Chiaroscuro. Marval, 1990. ISBN 978-2-86234-045-6.
L'Histoire de France. Preface by Marguerite Duras. Aperture/Paris Audiovisuel, New York/Paris 1991. ISBN 978-0-89381-471-7.