Ralph Gibson ? Nude

Ralph Gibson – Nude

The last time I went into a bookshop and emerged with more books than I ought to have bought, one of them was a slightly foxed copy of a book called, simply, Nude. I’d heard of Ralph Gibson before, even seen his work, but this was completely different. It’s a tour de force, one of the books that makes me keep turning pages, and wondering why I bother (more about this later).

I want to contrast it with a Christmas present book that my daughter-in-law said was a bit of a gamble, and after going all the way through it in a sitting, I agree. It’s every bit as elaborately produced as the Gibson book, but it’s full of nudes by someone you will have heard of, David Lynch, film director. While every new page of one book is an idea that I’d thought reasonably original, shot a decade or three before I got there, and is technically impeccable, Lynch has produced the sort of thing that might have happened if you’d given a point-and-shoot compact to an adolescent.



Now, as a director, Lynch seems to pride himself on the obscure: he invented the Netflix series format before Netflix existed, with a plot that seems more strung out than the characters – which is saying quite a lot. I enjoyed Mulholland Drive, but I can’t précis the plot with any certainty. Twin Peaks failed to pique my curiosity – perhaps in the same way the The Blue Lamp wouldn’t intrigue an American audience…

But back to Ralph Gibson. There’s no sameness about the images. All are female nudes, but each is different. The thing is that as I go through it, every couple of pages I find myself looking at an image that uses a specific idea that is unusual, and which I’ve tried to apply in some way in my own work. And whether I’d seen the Gibson version somewhere before trying the idea or not, it’s indicative that someone else did it before I did, and did it better. No wonder it seems to be selling for more than I paid, if you can find a copy…