Categories of Vision

Six decades of image-making

Travelling widely, Ralph Gibson works primarily in inspired series, associated image reveries in both monochrome and colour, whose titles—The Somnambulist, Déjà-Vu, Days at Sea, and Chiaroscuro—underline the particular poetic sensibility that informs his work. Starting out in 1960 with Dorothea Lange, he made his way to New York in 1967 and was soon considered in the same light as the likes of Larry Clark and Diane Arbus.

The photographs and series can of course speak for themselves. But for Gibson there is a philosophy at play behind the image, and in the included short texts he proposes his thesis. Nudes, portraits, still lives, narratives—loyal to his Leica, Gibson ranges between genres and creates new categories of vision. He gets closer to things and meditates on them in a way that only the silence of the image can attempt.

Produced in close collaboration with the artist, this book offers the fruit of more than six decades of image-making. From Gibson’s first photographs in San Francisco, Hollywood, and New York in the 1960s right up to the present day, this is the most comprehensive collection of this highly acclaimed photographer.