Ralph Gibson, born in Los Angeles in 1939, is one of the defining voices of American postwar photography. He rose to fame with his high-contrast black-and-white images that do less to document than to interpret – often bordering on the dreamlike, far removed from reality. In his new book, Gibson reflects on more than six decades of photographic creation. What began as a military assignment with a camera evolved in San Francisco, and later in New York, into a quest for a different kind of seeing – not for subjects, but for moments in which the world and perception merge. The camera, for him, is not merely a tool, but an extension of the body – and of consciousness.
Photographs 1960–2024 is not a retrospective in the traditional sense, but rather a visual diary of fragments – like memories that resist categorization. Gibson moves from early reportage to surreal compositions, from graphic precision to poetic openness. In series such as The Somnambulist, the camera becomes a seismograph of the unconscious. Time and again, his work seeks to articulate the unspeakable – the in-between. Gibson sees himself as a wanderer between states of being – a seeker who does not wish to arrive. His images do not offer answers – they respond with questions.
Latest reading
Ralph Gibson. Photographs 1960-2024 (552 pages, € 60) published by Taschen Verlag.
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The book was kindly made available to us by the publisher. The presentation and rating of HYPERMADE remains independent of this and is based solely on the content of the book.
