Ralph Gibson Interview

He is an artist who thinks deeply. At about 28 mins where making a nice point about form the conversation comes to an interesting pause, involving "a spoon" 🙂
 
You're certainly welcome Helen, Dogman, Brian and Gaving. I only took in half the interview yesterday and look forward to the rest of it today, although with sun shining here this morning it may be a bit.

The depth that Gibson brings to his photography and his art is refreshing especially in a time like this; I don't mean covid, but Instagram! He does it with grace.
 
I watched the video yesterday. Leica emailed it to some people, and a friend sent me the link. Gibson prefers using 50mm and 75mm lenses for vertical images on Leica digital cameras.
 
THANKS for sharing.

Was a little long in tooth to watch the entire video ...thanks to Dr.K.🙄. Standing up intellectually to Ralph Gibson is a daunting task that's for shure, so respect to Andreas Kaufmann doing it in the first place but it was obvious that he wasn't able to grab quite a few things or was not able to follow Ralph's thoughts either technically related to photography or itellectually as for the conceptual or philosophical ideas Ralph was trying to explain before he was interrupted so often:bang:.
But after all thanks to Leica/Andreas Kaufmann to keep up developing, building and marketing great tools for photography and to Ralph who made me see the light.
 
I only watched half of the interview and I liked the thoughts Ralph expressed, I'll look the second half this afternooon.

Loves that Ralph explained how for him photography and books are related.

I rarely photograph in vertical...something to try more ...
 
Unpacking some old books and just came across this groovy pic of RG ... posting with phone / Tapatalk so hope it works 😉

4f2e5668310f1cc66f76290ce73fa02c.jpg
 
I found a few interesting points in the RG inteview.

The idea of the need of a point of departure, specially if you aim to produce a coherent body of work. Maybe for a show or a book.

His interest for book, as final step for a photographic work.

The fact he uses B&W and colour in the same work, until a short time ago this was considered an "horror" by many photographers.

I did not understand his point about 50 on film and 75 on digital...I have to watch again and think again about it. Probably it his relate much to his formalist style. But I have to think about...(I know, I have already said it!).

Above all I like that he's so active and involved in new projects, at my age I have to remember this point 🙂

It's always interesting to listen to experienced photographers...
 
icebear said:
Was a little long in tooth to watch the entire video ...thanks to Dr.K.🙄. Standing up intellectually to Ralph Gibson is a daunting task that's for shure, so respect to Andreas Kaufmann doing it in the first place but it was obvious that he wasn't able to grab quite a few things or was not able to follow Ralph's thoughts either technically related to photography or itellectually as for the conceptual or philosophical ideas Ralph was trying to explain before he was interrupted so often:bang:.
Click to expand...

I agree fully with this. This Kaufmann is really a Kaufmann (businessman). He spoiled the whole interview. He underestimated the difficulty of interviewing someone more interesting than himself. He was not prepared for this. He liked listening to himself more than listening to Ralph Gibson.

Erik.
 
robert blu said:
I found a few interesting points in the RG inteview.

The idea of the need of a point of departure, specially if you aim to produce a coherent body of work. Maybe for a show or a book.

His interest for book, as final step for a photographic work.

The fact he uses B&W and colour in the same work, until a short time ago this was considered an "horror" by many photographers.

I did not understand his point about 50 on film and 75 on digital...I have to watch again and think again about it. Probably it his relate much to his formalist style. But I have to think about...(I know, I have already said it!).

Above all I like that he's so active and involved in new projects, at my age I have to remember this point 🙂

It's always interesting to listen to experienced photographers...
Click to expand...

Robert,

Thank you for bringing up these salient points. While the interviewer was a bit full of himself, I certainly felt there was lots here to think about.

The first you mention is Dorothy Lange's suggestion that he find a "point of departure" I felt that he took her suggestion and eventually with the Somnabulist, found his. Along these lines, and very revealing was his mention that his point of departure (I am admittedly out of context here) was not about capturing or better, portraying the human condition.

So I took it that he is more of an abstractionist telling his story in graphic terms, less interested in serving up all of the surrounding detail that say a wide angle lens would facilitate. Looking over a wide swath of his work, what I see he portrays is more about design/structure and imagery that is formalist in nature. Can it capture the human condition, absolutely he does, but that becomes secondary to his graphic portrayal.

To be more specific about the 50 vs 75, I guess I am still confused about that too. Had he stated that the 50 works better on digital, I'd guess that he'd feel that cropping is less of an issue with higher MP on small "M" bodied camera. He went the other direction as I recall saying that the 75-90 is where it's at for him with digital M cameras.

David
 
Erik van Straten said:
I agree fully with this. This Kaufmann is really a Kaufmann (businessman). He spoiled the whole interview. He underestimated the difficulty of interviewing someone more interesting than himself. He was not prepared for this. He liked listening to himself more than listening to Ralph Gibson.

Erik.
Click to expand...

this! and others have said.
the interview could have been much better.
 
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