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Updated: January 2002 EX LIBRIS [Gibson's] international quest to photograph signs, letter forms, icons, and images used to represent existence unfolds in Ex Libris." —The New York Review of Books "Some say, in fact, that Gibson is better known for his monographs than he is for his actual photographs, to which the photographer responds: 'My photographs show how I think about reality, and my books show how I think about photographs.' "—Photo Insider, 7 page feature story "Photographer's photographer Gibson turns his attention to the printed word and how we experience it, and the black and white images are as lush and sensual as any work he's done." —Flaunt "What immediately strikes a visitor upon entering Ralph Gibson's Tribeca studio art the hundreds, perhaps thousands of books lining the walls, floor to celiing. They give Gibson's loft the air of an esteemed professor's office rather than that of a world renowned photographer's studio. In conversation, Gibson is as academic as he is artistis: brilliant and witty, well-read and worldly, thoughtful about 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 with his passion for books. This passion spurred him to create one of his most personal monographs in years: Ex Libris." —Graphis, Cover story plus 10 page excerpt and interview with Matthew Carter, type designer "A master of black-and-white texture and and nuance, Gibson turns his attention here to the printed page... Artfully blended with imagery of faces, hands, sculpture, and jewelry, these photographs progress like an eerie dreamscape, mesmerizingly diffuse, evoking the book's closing suggestion: 'Perhaps, inthe infinite realm of imagination, all knowledge lives eternally.'" —American Photo "gibson's blqack and white images of music sheets and texts are beautiful in their simplicity—a celebration of all things abstract. There are photographs of the earliest surviving wedding contract written in cunieform, hand-inscribed documents by composer Bach, an antique Koran and a Ming dynasty stone rub." —Photo District News online "...reflects the artist's life-long fascination with books and language made visible." —Art & Antiques "Featuring the handwriting of Bach, Balzac, and Kafka, as well as early typography and digital technology, Gibson's photographs treat these icons, investing each with a meaning beyond the aesthetic and commenting at the same time on our values of meaning and beauty." —BookNews "Ex Libris impresses as a physical book, displaying ingenuity in its formal rhythms.... The book, which contains photographs of other books (its predecessors and relatives), becomes a reflexive object, in a dialogue with itself and its origins. This 'lexicon of signs, letterforms, shapes, and images...' plays with the definition of 'text' and 'sign.' In its placement of a woodcut from a book by Descartes next to a neon sign, or its inclusion of a Roman drain cover ('S.P.Q.R.') along with the Gutenberg Bible, Ex Libris suggests a democratizing attitude toward language and culture, moving between high and low, old and new, public and private." —Rain Taxi "The hush of the libraries is heard here, the sound of pages turning. In chiaroscuro effects he captures the soft shadows and quick illuminations of a library, using only natural light. Images of etchings, scribblings, and statuary all beckon one inward to the labyrinthe recesses of the mind. These pictures telescope times, fusing the past with the present... Each picture is an imagist poem." —Black & White "In this book, the images are text, allowing us, as viewers/readers, to perceive them with our eyes as well as our minds—both aesthetically and intellectually. And the images, which often bleed to the edge of the page, or spread across two pages, flow one into the next, like a narrative. In Gibson's books, the sequencing and arrangments of images play an important role. This combined with their stylized character—achieved wityh high contrast, shows, varied depth of field, cropping—gives his work a dreamlike or surreal quality." —The Bloomsbury Review More Press Coverage !! |
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