Ralph Gibson

With the intimacy that has become his trademark during a photographic career covering more than 40 years, Ralph Gibson now captures Brazil in all its carnivalesque splendor. Here are the vibrant colours, both natural and handmade, of the tropics; the beating sun on the beaches and the beating drums of a joyous band; and, of course, the faces and the fi gures of that country’s famously exhibitionistic women. But Gibson’s eye does not miss the contrasts and contraddictions so deeply conveyed by the reciprocal structuring between humanity and the surrounding landscape. As Gibson himself writes: Sao Paulo is an urban experience that defies comprehension. The place cannot be rationally explained. Random groups of disparate ideas collide across all barriers. Texture turns to color, motion becomes noise. Steel rots and crumbling stone soars skyward certain to last yet another century. New buildings remain unfinished and abndoned by an economy that crushes hundreds of thousands of people into non-spaces clinging to mountain walls. Infrastructure endures in spite of the absence of infrastructure.
Ralph Gibson has been known as a prolific creator of photography books for over thirty years. His photographs are included in over two hundreds museum collections around the world and have appeared in several exhibitions. Among his solo exhibitions are those at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (1996) and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Parigi (1999).