In conversation: Ralph Gibson with Matthew Carter

Graphis, Sep/Oct 2001 by Gibson, Ralph, Carter, Matthew

What immediately strikes a visitor upon entering Ralph Gibson's Tribeca studio are the hundreds, perhaps thousands of books lining the walls, floor to ceiling They give Gibson's loft the air of an esteemed professor's office rather than that of a worldrenowned photographer's studio. In conversation, Gibson is as academic as he is artistic: brilliant and witty, well-read and worldly, thoughtful in his reflections on art and thorough in his knowledge of art history and graphic design. Having never completed high school, Gibson closely links his life-long lust for knowledge to his passion for books. This passion spurred him to create one of his most personal monographs in years: Ex Libris.

When Graphic approached Gibson to discuss Ex Libris, we asked if there was anyone in the profession-be it a photographer, designer or artist-that he felt would be engaging to conduct the interview. He answered: Matthew Carter. Carter, the highly accomplished type designer (featured in Graphic 325), is a contemporary of Gibson's. For years both have admired each other's work, and even exchanged correspondence, but had never met. Upon meeting, they noted they have a good deal in common. Both hold honorary doctorates, but neither finished college. Both made the Chelsea Hotel scene in the late '60s-Gibson as a resident and Carter as a frequent reveller. Both are francophiles-- looking through books in Gibson's studio they discovered a shared fondness for Marguerite Duras. The dialogue that unfolded reveals that they are kindred spirits speaking the same rich language when discussing typography and photography.

Ralph Gibson's 40-year career as a fine arts photographer has garnered him fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the Leica Medal of Excellence. He is an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France, and holds honorary doctorates from the University of Maryland and Ohio Wesleyan University

Featured in hundreds of exhibitions, Gibson's photographs are included in about 150 museum collections worldwide. Gibson grew up in Hollywood, and his father was an assistant director to Hitchcock. Trained "hands-on" at the studio of masters such as Robert Frank, and Dorothea Lange, Gibson went on to study photography and lithography with the US. Navy. Since the early '60s, Gibson has shot uninterruptedly and lived off the sale of his prints, which span from architectural details, portraits, erotica and nudes to landscapes with a unique formalist elegance. Gibson's life-long fascination for books and typography has resulted in his 30th monograph Ex Libris, published by Powerhouse (Spring 2001).

Matthew Carter: I could tell from your previous books that the forms and arrangement of letters are interests of yours. Now you've devoted a book to them. How did Ex Libris come about?

Ralph Gibson: From the very onset I had been attracted to letterforms, typographical shapes, and a lot of it had to do with an equal fascination with graphic design. I'm talking about the early '60s, when I was attempting to freelance. The only people who understood what I was doing were the graphic designers, such as Robert Overby, Lou Danziger, Roger Kennedy or Jim Cross. I would be hanging out in their studio smelling the rubber cement, and the cutting and pasting of typography and the idea of photographs being reproduced in brochures and magazines was extremely appealing to me then as it is now. This was a very interesting period in American graphic design in the early '60s. You had a lot of good magazines still, many coming from Europe, such as Twin, Queen, Town, and Typographica was another-I have a few early copies of that one. And I started noticing typography having a distinct role in how a photograph is perceived. I don't really separate photographs from words, or photographs from type and shapes. I see them all as part of the same visual language that we in the West speak with great fluency at this point in our evolution. So, after many years of skirting the periphery of the subject, with the advent of the Mac I was able to start some of my own researches in typography for my books, always paying attention to how title and text were set for the book. I realized that it was an even broader subject than I had previously recognized. There are many beautiful books available on the history of typography, which is as prevalent as the air around us. I would photograph typefaces, word shapes, I would just be drawn to them. And I know from experience that anything that I'm slightly interested in-certainly if I'm interested in it enough to photograph it-would take me to another level of perception of what it is that I'm doing. So finally I realized it was time to really commit to the idea of a book about books: "bookness," and "typeness." I didn't know what I was going to find out, but I was always interested in tactility, how the object feels in my hand. I am fascinated by that charge of an antique book, a book that has survived hundreds of years of perusal. Whether in a museum, in some old bookstore, or in one of these magnificent libraries like the Pierpont Morgan Library, I find the patience of a library, of a book on a shelf, to be tangibly erotic. It's just waiting there for my caress, and you can touch any book you want, any place you want. It's an erotic thing, a library. [Laughter] And I find myself instantly aroused to pick up my camera. And then when I photograph inside these volumes, I realize that in order to make a visual equivalent of how I was perceiving these things, what it felt like looking at these books, I needed to evolve another set of moves for my camera handling. I shifted over to my Leicaflex, so that I could use macro lenses. And I took a lot of these type shapes and paragraphs and I took them out of their conventional context and started to discover another area of content which was equally intriguing to me because it brought my feelings as a photographer closer to my feelings as a book lover. But what I never understood is that there's still something about the nature of typography I do not understand...