Ralph Gibson American, 1939-
Ralph Gibson is best known for his photographic books. His images often incorporate fragments with erotic and mysterious undertones, building narrative meaning through surreal juxtaposition and contextualization. Characteristic of his sensibility is a trilogy, The Somnambulist (1970), Déjà-Vu (1973), and Days at Sea (1975), published by Lustrum Press, which Gibson founded in 1969. Other titles from his more than 15 published monographs include Syntax (1983), Tropism (1987), L'Anonyme (1987), and L'Histoire de France (1991), with an introduction by Marguerite Duras.
Born in Los Angeles, Gibson took up photography while serving in the U.S. Navy (1956–60), studied at the San Francisco Art Institute (1960–62), and later worked as an assistant to both Dorothea Lange and Robert Frank. With Frank, Gibson worked on the film Me and My Brother (1967–69) and as cameraman on Conversations in Vermont (1969). That same year he moved to New York City, where he established a studio and his press. Gibson has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1973, 1975) and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1985), a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (daad) Exchange, Berlin (1977), a New York Creative Artists Public Service Grant (1977), and a Grande Medaille de la Ville d'Arles (1994). He was made an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government (1986) and awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Maryland (1991). Gibson divides his time between New York and France. A.W.