Ralph Gibson - Secret of Light

Ralph Gibson is one of the most interesting American photographers of our time. His great international reputation is based on his exceptional work, which is shown and collected by leading museums around the world: He is represented with works in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the J.P. Getty Museum in Los Angeles as well as in the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Creative Center for Photography in Tucson, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris or the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland.

Gibson's works, which have been created since the early 1960s, completely contradict the conventional definition of the medium of photography - the meticulous recording of so-called reality: Gibson is not interested in the photographic documentation of reality, he understands photography itself as aesthetic reality. A leitmotif of his works is derived from the original meaning of the term photography - drawing with light. Gibson not only needs light as a material prerequisite for the creation of each of his photographs, light itself becomes an object of investigation and a means of design. Equally important, however, is the play with its counterpart, the shadow. Gibson thus elevates light itself to the subject of his œuvre.

The comprehensive exhibition of the work of photographer Ralph Gibson (* 1939) presents the development of his oeuvre from the 1960s to the immediate present on the basis of selected series. The exhibition and this book were developed in direct cooperation with the artist and are based on around 300 black-and-white and colour, analogue and digital works from the artist's private collection as well as works that the collector F.C. Gundlach acquired for his private photographic collection during his collaboration with Ralph Gibson in the early 1980s. Today, the collection is on permanent loan to the Haus der Photographie in the Hamburg Deichtorhallen. The exhibition "Ralph Gibson - Secret of Light" was curated by Sabine Schnakenberg together with Ralph Gibson.

Last edited on 12.06.2024