By
Kate VonderPorten
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Gallery show 'Ex Libris' makes its American premiere at the CCP
Internationally renowned photographer Ralph Gibson will be watching observers carefully during the American premiere of his exhibition "Ex Libris" at the Center for Creative Photography.
"I will be very interested to see during the opening at what distance people are impelled to stand from the work," Gibson said.
This is because Gibson, whose work explores the visual representation of books and language, is aware of the different effect that a book of his work - also titled Ex Libris - will have on his audience versus this gallery show, which began Saturday.
"It is really interesting to compare the feeling of the exhibition to the feeling of the publication of the book itself because Ex Libris is a book about books and this is an exhibition about Ex Libris," Gibson said. "These things function in various ways and that is one of the things that an artist learns. You see a work differently every time you put it up on the wall - it changes."
The project presents an artist's vision of the typographic and linguistic history of the Rosetta Stone, hand-inscribed documents by Bach, prints of the Gutenberg Bible and an antique Koran.
Gibson said he believes every good photograph literally vibrates an energy frequency perceived by the viewer. The book Ex Libris allows for more of an intimate experience than a gallery.
"A work on the wall emits a kind of low frequency hum - there is always an ideal viewing distance. When you do a book, you have it in your hands and everyone looking at the book is going to do that within a three to four inch radius," he said. "With an exhibition, one is at about 15 to 100 feet away from the work."
Not only is Gibson intrigued by the distance from his work, he said he is also interested in distance within the work itself.
"I have moved from doing open space to closed space in my work. Since I was in college, I have felt urges to move in closer to my subject. I want the surface of my images to be as tight as a drum - the skin of a drum I want to be fully responsible for every square centimeter," Gibson said. "When I sign a print, there's no one in the background waving at the camera."
Gibson has furthered his desire to be the sole editor of his photographs - he makes his own prints and layout decisions.
"I make my own dummy, lay them out and do my own typography. I made this decision early on and thought that it would mean that I would have to sacrifice a lot," Gibson said. "But I realized that to have done anything else would have been to sacrifice."
Context, in addition to creating and laying out his own prints, is also central to Gibson. He is aware that the context of how a work is presented can radically change its meaning.
"We have to give a lot of attention to the idea of contextualizing a portrait a certain way. I'll be the one that decides if the picture is any good or not and I'll be the one who decides what to do with it," he said. "I'm not interested in making a picture for one reason and then having it apply to another reason."
Gibson is also mindful of the degree to which a work's title can change and recontextualize its meaning.
"If I entitle that photograph 'Venus reading her lessons,' you will look at it one way than if I titled it 'Still no cure for breast cancer,'" he said. "I send the viewer in the direction I want him or her to go."
Gibson said photography is a chance for him to explore his relationship to the world and his place within it.
"From the very start I have wanted to use photography as a vehicle to measure my own perceptions of things," Gibson said. "How you feel determines how you perceive reality. Therefore, the only thing that is real is how you feel. These photographs are the only things I know about myself that are real. I have supported myself all my life - my introspecting and trying to determine what it is that stimulates and explains my existence on planet Earth."
Gibson's camera is never far from his side, and is always ready to capture the perfect shot.
"I carry my camera with me everywhere," he said. "I carry my camera with me everywhere because I discovered that if I don't, I will really see something."
Despite his worldy travels, Gibson has managed to find a "home base" in his photographs.
"This picture was made in Alaska, the one over there was made in Morroco, and there is one here from Japan," Gibson said while showing a series of photos. "But the pictures all look like the same person took them. So that home base is the work itself. It doesn't matter where in the world I go - I come back with my own picture."
Gibson said he encourages young artists to pursure their own style and not to merely copy the "old masters" when creating work.
"There is an interesting paradox in studying art; it is not practiced in America because we don't have an academy. But if you take France, or some of these older cultures, they have an academy that is based on emulation," Gibson said. "If you go to the Louvre today, you will see a student copying the 'Mona Lisa' on an easel. I believe in a medium like photography that is only 150 years old, you have to be totally original and that is true of anything you do."
Gibson said artistic expression is important to him as is personal expression.
"I really think that the search for self is the most luxurious way to spend one's time," he said.
"Ex Libris" runs through July 8.
