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Cafe Deux Magots

1986
20th century
12 1/2 in. x 8 3/8 in. (31.75 cm x 21.27 cm)

Ralph Gibson, American, b. 1939

Object Type: Photographs
Creation Place: North America, United States
Medium and Support: Gelatin silver print on paper
Credit Line: Carleton College Art Collection, gift of Arthur D. Kowaloff, class of 1968
Accession Number: 1997.005.03
Boliou Gallery show - June through September 1998
Picking Pictures Pt. II - 2,3/2000Biography
Ralph Gibson was born on January 16, 1939 in Los Angeles California. Gibsonfs father worked at Warner Brothers studio in Hollywood as an assistant director for 35 years, and Gibson himself even worked as a movie actor for five years while he was in school, appearing in bit parts for Alfred Hitchcock and Nicolas Ray.
His interest in photography originated when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy on his seventeenth birthday and was assigned to the Naval School of Photography. Ironically, his poor performance led to his expulsion. He reinstated, repeated the courses, and graduated, later traveling to the Mediterranean on two cruises where his duties as naval photographer included portraiture, aerial, and documentary work.
Upon discharge, Gibson enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute in commercial photography. He would later gain assistant positions with Dorethea Lange, from 1961-62, and Robert Frank, from 1967-68. After pursuing free-lance assignments in L.A., Gibson moved to New York and began working on a book. He published The Somnambulist in 1970, the acclaim of which sent him to exhibit, lecture, and travel throughout the U.S. and Europe. Gibson continued publishing and also exhibiting world-wide, but in the interim, he also formed a band in 1976 called Sex and Drugs, which played at artistsf parties in Soho for three years. Gibson has continued working and publishing and in 1988 he received the Leica Medal of Excellence Award for Fine Art Photography.
Ralph Gibson became known primarily for his black and white work, but has also published some series in color. The work is a mixture of the abstract, documentary, and surrealism and is recognized for its use of texture, light, gesture, and abstraction. His work is known for its metaphoric use of recurring objects and symbols such as hands, the female body, walls, and hats, to name a few. Gibson uses primarily close-up images along with light and shadow, an emphasis on the relationships between geometric shapes, and attention to detail in order to create a sense of timelessness and to evoke feelings of awareness and perception rather than to convey information.

Bibliography
Information from artistfs website (www.ralphgibson.com) and essay by Colleen Nugent

Books:
ACLU Agenda, The Strip, The Hawk, The Somnambulist, D+jç vu, Days at Sea, Syntax, L'Anonyme, Tropism, Les Cahiers de la Photographie #22, In Situ, Archive 24, Ralph Gibson: Early Work, Apropos de Mary Jan, Chiaroscuro, Women, Infanata, Overtones

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