Crossing the Atlantic Ocean in treacherous waters during his enlistment in the US Navy, Ralph Gibson had an epiphany. He decided then and there, at 21 years old, that he was to become a photographer.
"I looked up at the storm and it was rain and sleet and I was freezing, and there was lightning and thunder, but on the other side of the storm was my lucky star," he said, lounging on a sofa surrounded by his black-and-white masterpieces in Bangkok's Leica Gallery. "I decided that I knew my destiny was in photography. I never doubted for a minute that I was going to be successful."
And he was right.
Now considered one of the great pioneers of art photography, Gibson, 77, was in Bangkok earlier this month to give public lectures, photography workshops, and celebrate the launch of his latest exhibition, "Nudes And Muses", at Gaysorn Village's Leica Gallery (with a surprise musical performance to boot).
Ralph Gibson with his Leica M10. Apipar Norapoompipat
Hung inside the gallery until July 26th are 30 of Gibson's black-and-white masterpieces (including one recent colour photograph), ranging from his critically acclaimed nudes to his meticulously composed and dreamlike shots of his recurring themes, which include time, music and abstraction.
Shooting with a consistent style (what he calls a "visual signature") for the past five decades, it's easy to tell a Ralph Gibson photograph from that of any other photographer. Simple and mundane subject matter manifests into cinematic-like masterpieces; shadows -- not light -- have a life of their own; strong diagonal lines create dramatic compositions; and the most intimate shots of the female form take shape into impassioned poetry -- far from fetishisation or eroticism.
"[Photography] was invented in 1826," he said. "All the great themes were announced in the first year or so: landscape, portraiture, nude, architecture, travel. Almost everything had an early version of it. But one of the things I've done is recontextualised my work in ways that other people don't."
Gibson would work on long photographic projects, assigning himself a "point of departure", or a focus point, resulting in shots that he would have never encountered otherwise. For example, he shot everything at a metre's distance for a few years, everything with a 50mm lens for three years, and now for his current project "Vertical Horizons", he's limiting himself to shooting with a 135mm telephoto lens.
Yet, like every artist, it took much time and struggle to find both his style and recognition.
"I had a horrible time until I was 30," he said. "You can't believe how poor I was. But it didn't matter. That kind of desire [to be an artist] is very intense."
Joining the Navy at 16 and forced to go into photography school (which he actually failed, and to which he asked to return), Gibson then attended the San Francisco Art Institute at 21 before becoming an assistant to legendary photographer Dorothea Lange, who was the one to teach him about point of departure.
"I told her one time, 'I want to be a surrealist photographer', " Gibson said. "She said, 'You can only be yourself -- the rest is just a name'."
Moving in 1966 to New York City, where he briefly worked as a photojournalist for the prestigious Magnum Agency, Gibson cited one particular photograph as the tipping point of his career.
"That Hand Through The Doorway was the first picture that was different," he said, pointing to the surreal photograph of a disembodied hand reaching through a doorway. "For a period of a few weeks, when my work changed, I was very upset because I didn't understand. I thought I was losing something in me, or something was dying. I didn't like the feeling at first, but I was not satisfied with my old work -- my photojournalism. It wasn't me."
Staying up late nights, sleeping during the day, and engulfing himself in books, atonal music and film, the young photographer came to the realisation that his camera "was photographing a dream".
Continuing to capture surrealist, dreamlike moments for the next three years, Gibson, broke and in debt, released his first ever photobook, The Somnambulist, from his newly established company Lustrum Press in 1970. The rest was history.
"At various points in my life, for one reason or another, I have reinvented myself," he said. "Just in terms of me and me -- not in the eyes of society. I've gone in different personal directions for different reasons, and it was always very threatening. It was like a crisis. But in the end it was a very good thing because I was always in a better place. I've been fortunate to have these moments." Ever since, Gibson has compiled over 40 photo books, with his first three titles -- The Somnambulist (1970), Deja-Vu (1973), and Days At Sea (1974) -- being regarded as the must-have "Black Trilogy" for photographers.
But even with his critically acclaimed books, his Leica Medal of Excellence, and his nearly 200 prints in museum collections around the world, the veteran photographer now sees more room for improvement than ever. In the past 20 years, Gibson had been tiptoeing into the realm of colour photography, hoping to create photographs as good as his black-and-white shots, calling it "a horrible challenge". He's also only picked up digital photography a few years ago, with the Leica M Monochrom, hoping to do some lowlight photography as the technology allows.
"I want to fulfil my potential," he said. "I'm good enough as a photographer to know how good I really could be. I'm not trying to show anybody else what I'm doing. I'm trying to show me what I could do.
"You see, I study a lot, and I read a lot of philosophy, critical theory and semiotics. When I was younger, I couldn't understand all that. But as I got older I started understanding the stuff for the first time. And that understanding has impacted my photographs in a very positive way. I'm going at it with additional information that I've recently acquired."
"Most people in life -- they save money and they retire. They have an inventory of their stocks and they have their collections. My inventory are not these pictures," he said as he pointed to the gallery walls. "My inventory are all the pictures I have in front of me that I have yet to make. That's my real fortune. If you work as an artist, you never stop learning. It's not even why you do it. It just happens to be one of the things you get."
