All about photo.com: photo contests, photography exhibitions, galleries, photographers, books, schools and venues.
Enter AAP Magazine 54 Nature: Landscape, Wildlife, Flora & Fauna
Enter AAP Magazine 54 Nature: Landscape, Wildlife, Flora & Fauna
Ralph Gibson
Ralph Gibson
Ralph Gibson

Ralph Gibson

Country: United States
Birth: 1939

Ralph Gibson 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. Ralph Gibson 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 most current projects being State of the Axe published by Yale University Press in Fall of 2008 and Nude by Taschen (2009). His photographs are included in over one hundred and fifty museum collections around the world, and have appeared in hundreds of exhibitions. Gibson has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1973, 1975, 1986), a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (D.A.A.D.) Exchange, Berlin (1977), a New York State Council of the Arts (C.A.P.S.) fellowship (1977), and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1985). The Rencontres d'Arles festival presented his work in 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1989 and 1994.

I embrace the abstract in photography and exist on a few bits of order extracted from the chaos of reality.

-- Ralph Gibson


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 (1986) and appointed, Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2005) by the French government. His awards include: Leica Medal of Excellence Award (1988), "150 Years of Photography" Award, Photographic Society of Japan (1989), a Grande Medaille de la Ville d'Arles (1994) and the Lucie Award for lifetime achievement (2008). Gibson also received an honorary doctorate of Fine Arts from the University of Maryland (1991), and a second honorary doctorate from the Ohio Wesleyan University (1998). He has worked exclusively with Leica for almost 50 years. Gibson currently lives in New York and travels frequently to Europe and Brazil.

Source: Wikipedia


Having begun his acclaimed photographic career as an apprentice to the great documentarians Dorothea Lange and Robert Frank, Ralph Gibson is known for his highly distinctive vision in still photography.

By intensifying contrast and emphasizing the grain of the film in his prints, Gibson concentrates on the minute details: the edge of a café table, the arc of a hip, the glint of a fork. Gibson’s works are both formally vigorous and eternally evocative.

His photographs are in major private and public collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Source: Weston Gallery

I’m interested in producing truncated shapes in proportion to the frame and composition, shapes that are preferably luminous. I’m not interested in the full-figure. I want to abstract forms.

-- Ralph Gibson



 

Ralph Gibson's Video

Selected Books

Inspiring Portfolios

Call for Entries
AAP Magazine #54 Nature
Publish your work in AAP Magazine and win $1,000 Cash Prizes
 
Stay up-to-date  with call for entries, deadlines and other news about exhibitions, galleries, publications, & special events.

More Great Photographers To Discover

Patricia Lagarde
Patricia Lagarde was born in Mexico City, where she currently lives and works. Studies in Communication and Graphic Design. She develops in the middle of photography from an early age. Her work revolves around three fundamental axes; the object as a symbol, the construction of memory and the poetics of space. Her images and artist books have been shown in Museums, Galleries and Fairs in various countries around the world. In Mexico it is represented by Patricia Conde Galería, in San Francisco by The Jack Fischer Gallery. Statement Patricia Lagarde's work is akin to that imaginary construction of an excessive, circular notion of time found in the most conspicuous narratives of magical realism. She grabs such epic dimension of time and submits it to an intimate experience. The signs she works with have no great scenarios of history as spatial references but rather much more discrete enclosures, such as the alchemist's laboratory, a cabinet of curiosities or an antiques collection. Objects that have been touched, used or abandoned are the most recurring personal motives throughout her career. Or perhaps we should say the “aura” of such objects, resulting from the way time has noticed them. Insects, toys, maps and spheres, ancient instruments, clothes, reproductions of works of art, other photographs and other texts are then taken to a ranking ground where the colossal and the tiny are confused, where the distinction between the own and the alien is no longer important, the imaginary and the real hierarchies are reversed and the meaning of usefulness loses relevance. (Author_Juan Antonio Molina)
Marco Panzetti
Marco Panzetti (Italy, 1981) is a freelance documentary photographer, multimedia journalist and visual artist. His work focuses on contemporary issues related to social injustice, migration and collective identity. He successfully carried out projects in Europe, Latin America and Asia, frequently in collaboration or on assignment for nonprofit organizations and media outlets. His long-term body of work on the European migrant crisis, 'The Idea of Europe' (2015 – present) received international recognition including an Honorable Mention at the 2017 Lange-Taylor Prize and the first prize in the video category at the 2017 Migration Media Award. 'The Idea of Europe' is a long-term documentary work on the human impact of the European refugee crisis. Fleeing from conflicts, humanitarian crisis and economical distress in their countries of origin, and escaping the slavery practices commonly reported in Libya, since early 2015 more than 10,000 people lost their lives in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe, and about 3 million people applied for asylum in EU countries. This huge influx highlighted the limits and unfairness of border control policies and asylum systems still anchored to the post-WWII treaties, and caused a major discussion among the public opinion. Can Europe still indulge in considering itself the cradle of human rights? With this question as motivation and common thread, 'The Idea of Europe' follows the migrants' journey from the desperate Mediterranean crossing to the asylum request in Italy. This project encompasses work from 'In Between', a project done in 2016-2017 from a rescue vessel in the Mediterranean to report on the humanitarian tragedy unfolding in international waters, 'We are not going back', a project work done in 2015-2016 from the disembarking port of Lampedusa and at the Italian border town of Ventimiglia where I documented the migrants' encounter with the resurging (physical, ideological and bureaucratic) walls of Europe, and 'Life after Hell', a project done in 2017 from various reception centres across Italy where I portrayed the daily lives of those waiting for a decision on their asylum request, which could take up to two years.
Richard Kalvar
United States
1944
Richard Kalvar (born 1944) is an American photographer who has been associated with Magnum Photos since 1975. Kalvar was born in Brooklyn, New York. A trip to Europe in 1966 with a Pentax camera given him by French fashion photographer Jérôme Ducrot (with whom Kalvar worked in New York as an assistant) inspired him to become a photographer. On his return to New York he worked at Modernage photo lab. Two years later he moved to Paris and joined Agence Vu photography agency. Kalvar has worked around the world, especially in England, France, Italy, Japan and the United States and has had a solo exhibition at Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. Source: Wikipedia Ambiguity is at the forefront of Richard Kalvar’s photography. Kalvar, who describes context as the “enemy”, seeks mystery and multiple meaning through surprising framing and meticulous timing. He describes his approach as “more like poetry than photojournalism – it attacks on the emotional level.” Kalvar has published a number of solo books: Portrait de Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, 1993; Earthlings (Terriens), 2007; Drôles de vie!, 2008; Richard Kalvar: Photo Poche, 2018; Richard Kalvar: Photofile (the English-language version of Photo Poche), 2019; and Magnum, la Storia, le Immagini: Richard Kalvar, 2019. He has had important exhibitions in the US, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, and has participated in multiple group books and exhibitions in America and Europe, notably Centre Pompidou Album Photographique 1, 1979, L’Usine, 1987, and in several Magnum books, most recently Magnum Contact Sheets, 2013, Magnum Analog Recovery, 2017 and Magnum Manifesto, 2017. Kalvar’s work has appeared in Geo, The Paris Review, Creative Camera, Aperture, Zoom, Newsweek, and Photo, among many others. Editorial assignments and even commercial work have given Kalvar an additional opportunity to do personal photography. He did many documentary stories that allowed him to disengage from documentary mode when the occasion arose. Kalvar joined Magnum as an associate member in 1975, and became a full member two years later. He subsequently served several times as vice president, and once as president of the agency.Source: Magnum Photos Kalvar has done extensive personal work in America, Europe and Asia, notably in France, Italy, England, Japan and the United States, supporting himself with journalistic and commercial assignments. He has a long-term unfinished project in progress in Rome. In 1980, Kalvar presented a solo show at Agathe Gaillard gallery in Paris and has participated in many group shows. A major retrospective of his work was shown at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in 2007, accompanied by his book Earthlings. Kalvar’s photographs are marked by a strong homogeneity of aesthetic and theme. His images frequently play on a discrepancy between the banality of a real situation and the uncanny feeling that is produced by a particular choice of timing and framing. The result of his careful framing is a state of tension between two levels of interpretation, attenuated by a touch of humour.Source: Sedition Art
Hannah Altman
United States
Hannah Altman is a Jewish-American artist from New Jersey. She holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Through photographic based media, her work interprets relationships between gestures, the body, lineage, and interior space. She has recently exhibited with the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Blue Sky Gallery, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, and Photoville Festival. Her work has been featured in publications such as Vanity Fair, Carnegie Museum of Art Storyboard, Huffington Post, New York Times, Fotoroom, Cosmopolitan, i-D, and British Journal of Photography. She was the recipient of the 2019 Bertha Anolic Israel Travel Award and included in the 2020 Critical Mass and Lenscratch Student Prize Finalists. She has delivered lectures on her work and research across the country, including Yale University and the Society for Photographic Education National Conference. Her first monograph, published by Kris Graves Projects, is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Thomas J Watson Library. Kavana Jewish thought suggests that the memory of an action is as primary as the action itself. This is to say that when my hand is wounded, I remember other hands. I trace ache back to other aches - my mother grabbing my wrist pulling me across the intersection, my great-grandmother's fingers numb on the ship headed towards Cuba fleeing the Nazis, Miriam's palms pouring water for the Hebrews in the desert - this is how a Jew understands action. Because no physical space is a given for the Jewish diaspora, time and the rituals that steep into it are centered as a mode of carrying on. The bloodline of a folktale, an object, a ritual, pulses through interpretation and enactment. In this work I explore notions of Jewish memory, narrative heirlooms, and image making; the works position themselves in the past as memories, in the present as stories being told, and in the future as actions to interpret and repeat. To approach an image in this way is not only to ask what it looks like but asks: what does it remember like?
Golnaz Abdoli
Iran/United States
1956
I was born in Iran and lived the first 18 years of my life there. The vivid memories of my homeland are its cold winters with snowcapped mountains, cars swerving on slippery roads, a small frozen pool, and me hoping that school would be cancelled; my mom preparing pomegranate for my siblings and I, and at the same time warming my hands with her warm breath. During the next forty years I enjoyed getting my degrees in Biology and Education in California, USA, raising my two children , and working in the field of education. I taught elementary school for 21 years. I picked up photography after I retired from teaching. I loved it immediately because it gave me a new voice to express myself and be creative. I found that photography and its many genres is a unique language with many dialects, and it can bring people from all over the world together. But now my love of photography has developed into a passion during the Covid-19 Pandemic. I appreciate it for helping me delve deep into my soul and understand myself better. During the lockdown photography has become my best friend and companion. Statement I approach photography of modern architecture as a visual puzzle that needs to be unravelled. My images are theatrical and mysterious. When I hold the camera, it awakens a sense of curiosity in me. I look up, ponder at the lines of steel coming together, light and shadow intertwining to form reflections, and I question how far into the space the lines travel, and the patterns repeat themselves. Reflections of outside buildings form mysterious forms and rhythms on the structural facade of modern architecture, inviting it to form a community with its surrounding. I appreciate the modern architecture for its beauty.
J.M. Golding
United States
J. M. Golding is a photographic artist based in the San Francisco Bay area. She chooses plastic, pinhole, and vintage film cameras as her primary tools: plastic cameras such as the Holga for the spontaneity they promote and their capacity to help create dreamlike images, pinhole cameras for their simplicity and their contemplative quality, and vintage film cameras for the subjectivity of the images that are possible. J. M.'s photographs have been shown internationally in numerous juried and invitational group exhibitions, and she is the recipient of the 2013 Holga Inspire Award, the Lúz Gallery Curator's Choice Award (2009), Best of Show in Wanderlust (Dickerman Prints, 2017, in collaboration with Al Brydon), and several Honorable Mentions in other juried exhibitions. Her work has also appeared in Black & White, Diffusion, Shots, F-Stop, Square, and Insight magazines, Inside the Outside, Don't Take Pictures, The Holga Darkroom, and The Shot and in two books of pinhole photographs. She has been profiled in LensCulture, F-Stop Magazine, Wobneb Magazine, Mother F-Stop, Toycamera.es, and Pinholista. About Transitional Landscapes These photographs contain transitions from outer landscape to inner, from objective landscape to subjective. Square frames of film that are typically separate join together to form new, integrated images that would not have been possible otherwise, wholes that are greater than the sum of their parts, landscapes that are simultaneously real and imaginary. In this way, and also by transcending the literal separation of the component scenes, they allude to psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott's concept of the transitional object. The photographs embody the eye's transitions across the scene, moving incrementally from one perspective to another as they take on and combine multiple points of view. Because the overlapping exposures used to create the images are made sequentially, as compared to the single moment typically seen in photographs, the series of exposures in each image portrays transitions in time from one moment to the next, creating a connection between past and present, and possibly, present and future. Although the time and distance traversed are in many ways small, the transitions across them create surprising changes in what is visible.
Noémie Goudal
France
1984
Noémie Goudal's practice involves the construction of ambitious staged, illusionistic interventions within the landscape, documented using film and photography. Her oeuvre expands photography across its standard parameters, into immersive installations and performances, underpinned by rigorous research examining the intersection of ecology and anthropology and the limitations of theoretical conceptions of the natural world. Goudal's latest work unravels an artistic dialogue with the field of paleoclimatology, analysing climate and geology from the vantage point of "deep time" to acquire an understanding of our planet's trajectory. Goudal's work creates an intellectual bridge between our experience of "real time" and deep time, measured in millions of years, exposing the geographies of the earth as we know them to be mere momentary states in a cycle of continuous flux. Noémie Goudal (b.1984) graduated from the Royal College of Art (UK) in 2010 with an MA in Photography. She is currently shortlisted for the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2024. Solo exhibitions include Mostyn, Llandudno, UK (2024); FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France (2024); ANIMA, Tate Modern, London, UK; Venice Theatre Biennale, Venice, Italy and Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2023); Post Atlantica, Les Rencontres d'Arles, Arles, France (2022); ANIMA, Festival d'Avignon, Avignon, France (2022); Décantations, La Vitrine, Frac Île-de-France, Paris, France (2022); Post Atlantica, Le Grand Café Centre d'Art Contemporain, Saint-Nazaire, France (2021); Echos toujours plus sourds, Musée Delacroix, Paris, France (2021); Observatorium, Kunstverein Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Germany (2019); Telluris, Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Ballarat, Australia (2019); Telluris, Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle, Le Locle, Switzerland (2019); Stations, The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Finland (2018); Southern Light Stations, The Photographer's Gallery, London, UK (2016); The Geometrical Determination of the Sunrise, FOAM Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2015). Selected group exhibitions include Second Nature: Photography at the Age of the Anthropocene, Nasher Museum, Durham, NC, USA (2024-2026); Un Manifeste du regard sur la Nouvelle Aquitaine, Frac Nouvelle-Aquitaine La MÉCA, Bordeaux, France (2024); New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, USA (2024); PHOTO 24, Melbourne Photo Biennale, Melbourne, Australia (2024); Bella Vista, Centre d'Art Contemporain, Sant-Nazaire, France (2021); Accelerate Your Escape: Gary Hume Explores the Hiscox Collection, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2020); Inner Space, Lisbon Architecture Triennale, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Lisbon, Portugal (2019); MELTDOWN: A Visualization of Climate Change, Horniman Museum, London, UK (2019). Goudal's work is held in public collections including Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; David Roberts Art Foundation, London, UK; FOAM Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, USA; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, France; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, India, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK and The New Art Gallery Walsall, Walsall, UK. Noémie Goudal lives and works in Paris.
Advertisement
AAP Magazine #54 Nature
Win a Solo Exhibition this January
AAP Magazine #54 Nature

Latest Interviews

Exclusive Interview with Julie Wang
Chinese-born photographer Julie Wang brings a poetic, contemplative sensitivity to her visual exploration of the world. Having lived for nearly equal parts of her life in China, Europe, and the United States, she approaches her subjects with the nuanced perspective of someone shaped by many cultures. This blend of distance, curiosity, and emotional resonance infuses her work with a quiet depth, allowing her to reveal the fragile beauty and subtle tensions that often pass unnoticed.
Exclusive Interview with Ghawam Kouchaki
American photographer Ghawam Kouchaki brings a sharply observant and introspective gaze to the streets of Japan’s capital. Based in Los Angeles, he approaches Tokyo with the distance — and curiosity — of an outsider, allowing him to uncover the city’s subtle contradictions, quiet tensions, and fleeting gestures that often go unnoticed. His series Tokyo no no, selected as the Solo Exhibition for December 2024, explores the hidden undercurrents of urban life: the unspoken rules, the small ruptures in routine, the poetic strangeness found in everyday moments. Through muted tones, instinctive timing, and meticulous framing, Kouchaki reveals a Tokyo that exists somewhere between reality and imagination — both intimate and enigmatic. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
Exclusive Interview with Tommi Viitala
Tommi Viitala, winner of AAP Magazine #44: Street, is a Finnish photographer celebrated for his striking and cinematic street photography. With a keen eye for atmosphere and composition, he captures fleeting urban moments that reveal the poetry of everyday life. His work often explores the tension between solitude and connection within contemporary cityscapes, blending documentary realism with artistic sensibility. Viitala’s photographs have been exhibited internationally and recognized for their strong visual storytelling and emotional depth. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
Exclusive Interview with Robert Mack
Robert Mack is a California-based visual artist, photographer, and filmmaker. His fine art photography and films have been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, with major shows at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany. Both institutions hold his work in their permanent collections. Working across different media, Mack has built a career exploring the complexities of human presence and representation. In 1981, while living in Baltimore, he produced The Perkins Project: Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity, a rare photographic and film study inside Maryland’s hospital for the criminally insane. These stark yet compassionate black-and-white portraits remain one of his most powerful and controversial bodies of work.
Exclusive Interview with Alan Schaller About Irys
Alan Schaller is a London-based photographer best known for his striking black-and-white street photography and as co-founder of Street Photography International, one of the largest online communities dedicated to the genre. With years of experience both behind the camera and in building platforms that give visibility to photographers, Schaller has now turned his focus to creating a new digital space for photography itself. His latest venture, Irys, is a photography app designed by photographers, for photographers, with the aim of offering a dedicated platform where images are respected as works of art rather than treated as disposable content.
Exclusive Interview with Guillaume Bonn
With his latest book Paradise, Inc., celebrated documentary photographer Guillaume Bonn takes us deep into the heart of East Africa, where the promises and failures of wildlife conservation collide. Far from offering a romanticized vision of nature, Bonn’s work confronts us with urgent realities: the tensions between local communities and conservation policies, the sacrifices of rangers on the frontlines, and the long-lasting impact of human activity on fragile ecosystems. Spanning more than two decades of fieldwork, the project blends powerful imagery with investigative depth, raising difficult but necessary questions about transparency, accountability, and the Western-led models that dominate conservation. Enriched by the voices of those too often left out of the conversation—including a preface by Maasai leader Ezekiel Ole Katato and an introduction by journalist Jon Lee Anderson—Paradise, Inc. is both a stunning visual journey and a call to action. In the following interview, Guillaume Bonn reflects on the making of Paradise, Inc., the ethical dilemmas at the heart of his work, and the urgent need to rethink our approach to conservation in East Africa and beyond.
Exclusive Interview with Sander Vos
Sander Vos is a fine art photographer based in London whose work seamlessly blends elements of Surrealism with portraiture. Drawing inspiration from his background in design, Vos embraces light and contrast to sculpt striking, graphic compositions. His photographs invite the viewer into a world where revelation and concealment coexist, leaving space for imagination and interpretation.
Exclusive Interview with Tomasz Trzebiatowski Editor-in-chief FRAMES Magazine
Founded in 2020 by photographer, publisher, and classical pianist Tomasz Trzebiatowski, FRAMES Magazine has quickly established itself as a thoughtful space for photography lovers who believe that powerful images deserve to live on paper. Known for its beautifully printed quarterly issues and dynamic international community, FRAMES bridges the gap between tradition and innovation in the photographic world. As editor-in-chief, Trzebiatowski has created not only a publication but a platform that celebrates diverse genres, nurtures dialogue, and champions the tactile experience of print in a digital age. In this interview, he reflects on the journey from founding FRAMES to building a global membership, the challenges of independent publishing, and the future of photography in both print and digital forms.
Exclusive Interview with Manuel Besse
French photographer Manuel Besse is known for his compelling black-and-white imagery, which blends portraiture, documentary, and poetic narrative into a singular visual voice. With a career spanning several decades and continents—from the gold mines of Serra Pelada to the Arctic Circle—his work reflects a deep commitment to authenticity, human connection, and the preservation of cultural and natural landscapes. His series Macadam, winner of AAP Magazine #41 B&W, offers a contemplative look at fleeting urban encounters, rendered in his signature monochrome style. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
Call for Entries
AAP Magazine #54 Nature
Publish your work in AAP Magazine and win $1,000 Cash Prizes