How many more extraordinary photo books can Ralph Gibson make? Yes, he has dozens of stunning monographs under his belt, but the photographer’s latest, Ralph Gibson: Photographs 1960–2024, is something quite special.
For starters, this sweeping look back into the rearview mirror of a life in photography collects all of my favorite Gibson pictures as well some images I’d somehow never seen before. But it also leads readers through the long and winding evolution of Gibson’s ever-evolving, boundary-pushing approach to making memorable pictures.
For those unfamiliar with the great photographer’s work, a bit of background: After leaving the Navy, a young Gibson went from photojournalism (and apprenticing under the legendary Dorothea Lange) to living in New York City (at the notorious Chelsea Hotel, naturally) where the idea of photojournalism gave way to an artist’s more introspective outlook on the world.
Later, his pictures evolved again, from dream-state surrealism to an approach that subtracted information from the picture, thereby distilling the image to its essence. The new book dances through these eras and displays Gibson’s various genres (journalistic, abstract, nudes, portraits, still life, etc.) and mediums (film, digital, black-and-white, color). And then there are photos that defy easy classification, which I happen to love.
Aside from the fact that Gibson is a legend—the man has received a Guggenheim and been honored by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, the Leica Hall of Fame, and the French government, which bestowed upon him the prestigious Commandeur de L’Ordre des Arts et des Letters—there are damn good reasons to pick up this book.
One, of course, is the images themselves, hundreds of them, consistently gorgeous and always intriguing. (The book, published by Taschen, is 552 pages and weighs nearly 6 pounds.) Another is that Gibson is and has always been an absolute master of the art of bookmaking, and there is much to learn by studying how he thinks about his pages: The images on his spreads speak to each other, recontextualize each other, reveal each other in ways both compelling and surprising. Each photo tells its own story, of course, but Gibson’s spreads tell yet another.
Gibson himself is not immune to the magic of this alchemy. “Since copies of this book arrived, I have looked at it every day, both in my studio and at home,” he told me. “I leave certain spreads open for a few days, or maybe compare them to other spreads from other periods in my work.” He went on: “The photographs in this volume, when seen together, appear to have formed an organism, a living entity in and of itself. Fully autonomous and independent of the photographer, I am seeing ideas, shapes, motions, and attitudes as though for the first time.”
I asked Gibson how long it took him to make the book, expecting him to say something like, “I worked on it for two solid years.” But Gibson, at 86, is wiser and less predictable than that. “The structure of this book follows the canon of all autobiographical endeavors in that it is anecdotal and chronological,” he told me. “And thus took about a lifetime to make.”
Indeed it did.
Ralph Gibson. Photographs 1960–2024 is published by Taschen and available for $80.
Bill Shapiro (@Billshapiro) is the former editor-in-chief of LIFE magazine.
