Ralph Gibson: The Border Between Dream and Reality

 Ralph Gibson, is an American photographer, known for his bold, high-contrast black-and-white imagery. His work me feel surreal and intensely intimate. I would say that his work often stands apart from traditional documentary photography because it tends to distill reality into something more symbolic, and more psychological. His images tend to feel like fragments from a dream that you had, they are pieces from a larger narrative that we must manually piece together.

 

For example, in the above photo, we see someone with their head down looking at what appears to be in a somber state. We can piece this together because of the tissue that is next to this. Why are they somber? Probably because of the newspaper they just had read. We are only getting a momentary glimpse into their world much like waking up and remembering only a fragment of a dream, yet however we can piece together a narrative much like we are able to do with fragments of dreams.

This is why for me his work often feels like an exploration of memory and perception. This image was able to tell a straightforward story, but very often they don’t instead they are hinting at something just out of reach, something half-remembered. They remind me of the moments right when you wake up when you half remember the details of the dream. You don’t remember any details, but you remember shapes, scenes, maybe some events of what might have happened but nothing more. What is what Gibson’s photography feels like to me, these partial scenes.