Artist Biographies
Ralph Gibson
American, 1939-
Ralph Gibson is best known for his photographic books. His images often incorporate fragments with erotic and mysterious undertones, building narrative
meaning through surreal juxtaposition and contextualization. Characteristic of his sensibility is a trilogy,
The Somnambulist (1970),
Déjà-Vu (1973), and Days at
Sea (1975), published by Lustrum Press, which Gibson founded in 1969. Other titles from his more than 15 published monographs include
Syntax (1983), Tropism (1987),
L'Anonyme (1987), and L'Histoire de
France (1991), with an introduction by Marguerite Duras.
Born in Los Angeles, Gibson took up photography while serving in the U.S. Navy (1956-60), studied at the San Francisco Art Institute (1960-62),
and later worked as an assistant to both Dorothea Lange and Robert Frank. With Frank, Gibson worked on the film
Me and My Brother (1967-69) and as
cameraman on Conversations in Vermont (1969). That same year he moved to New York City, where he established a studio and his press. Gibson has received
fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1973, 1975) and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1985), a Deutscher
Akademischer Austauschdienst (daad) Exchange, Berlin (1977), a New York Creative Artists Public Service Grant (1977), and a Grande Medaille de la Ville d'Arles (1994).
He was made an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government (1986) and awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of
Maryland (1991). Gibson divides his time between New York and France. A.W.
André Giroux
French, 1801-1879
André Giroux was the son of Alphonse Giroux, cameramaker to Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre and a painter of some note. A painter himself, André
was equally adept at the calotype and the wet collodion on glass techniques, ultimately concentrating on glass negatives for his photography. His landscapes,
which often include architectural and rural subjects, were known for their harmonious appearance, often achieved through substantial manipulation of the
negatives. More than any other early French photographer, Giroux was interested in painterly effects. He relied on heavy retouching of his negatives, sometimes using
India ink to produce a soft atmospheric quality. His landscapes recall etchings by artists of the Barbizon School, such as Charles-François Daubigny,
Théodore Rousseau, or Camille Corot.
A resident of the Académie français in Rome, Giroux was also named a chevalier in the Légion d'honneur in 1870. The prints he produced were
unusually rich and complex in a way that was uncommon before the time of Robert Demachy. T.W.F.
Emmet Gowin
American, 1941-
For Emmet Gowin (born in Danville, Virginia), the intimate bonds of family are at the root of human experience. His early black-and-white photographs of
his wife, Edith, their two sons, Elijah and Isaac, and Edith's extended family in Danville focused on the cycle of life, how people relate to the land, and the ritual
importance of the everyday. These themes pervade his life's work.
After graduating from the Richmond Professional Institute (B.A. in graphic design, 1965), Gowin immersed himself in photography. He studied with
Harry Callahan at the Rhode Island School of Design (M.F.A., 1967) and visited Walker Evans in New York, who praised Gowin's student work and exchanged
prints. Gowin also became acquainted with Frederick Sommer and his philosophical and aesthetic ideas, a friendship that has endured.
In 1973 Gowin began to photograph the landscape and has since traveled the world, working extensively in the British Isles, Italy, Jordan, and
Israel. Since the early 1980s, he has made aerial photographs of geographic areas that have been altered by either natural or man-made forces: the
industrial-scale agriculture of the Great Plains, the U.S.-Mexico border, the nuclear test area of Yucca Flats, and Kuwait after the Gulf War. Publications of his work
include Emmet Gowin/Photographs (1976),
Petra (1986), and Emmet
Gowin/Photographs (1990).
In addition to teaching at the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio (1967-71) and Princeton University (since 1973), Gowin has taught workshops and
lectured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. A major traveling retrospective of his work was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of
Art (1990), and he has had one-person exhibitions at the Dayton Art Institute (1968), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (with Robert Adams, 1971),
George Eastman House, Rochester (1971), the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1971, 1973, 1983), the Photo Gallery International, Tokyo (1989,
1993), Espace Photographie Marie de Paris (1992), the American Centers at Fokuoka, Osaka, Kyoto, Saporo, Yokohama, and Tokyo (1992-93), and the
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (1995).
Among his achievements are fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1974), the National Endowment for the Arts
(1977, 1979), and the Pew Charitable Trust (1995), as well as the Friends of Photography Peer Award (1992). Gowin lives in Newtown, Pennsylvania. A.W.
Jan Groover
American, 1943-
Jan Groover is often included in discussions about the "new" color photographers of the early 1970s because of her preference and proficiency with
emerging color technologies. Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, and educated at Pratt Institute (B.F.A., 1965) and Ohio State University (M.A., 1970), Groover began as
an abstract painter and taught at the University of Hartford in the early 1970s. She soon turned to photography, first gaining recognition for the serial diptychs
and triptychs of automobiles, highways, and city streets she made using the 35mm format and color film. In 1978 she began the still lives for which she is most
recognizedcompositions of kitchen utensils, vegetables, and plants printed up close and larger than life. Although readings of Groover's work have been
largely formalist, her images also reveal a witty understanding and appreciation of the history of photography. With a subtle humor, she makes reference to such
celebrated 20th-century artists as Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, and Edward Weston.
In 1979 Groover began experimenting with platinum-palladium printing and, later, with a banquet camera to effect an elongated horizontal framing.
Departing from her tabletop setups, these images are sociologically charged investigations of outdoor spaces such as backyards and fieldslarge-scale
still-life arrangements haphazardly cluttered by lawn chairs, barbecues, and children's toys.
Among Groover's awards are two grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (1975, 1978) and fellowships from the National Endowment for
the Arts (1978) and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1979).
Jan Groover, her first monograph, was published in 1976. She has had many
one-person exhibitions, including a mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1987), with accompanying catalogue. Other publications
include Pure Invention: The Tabletop Still
Life (1990) and Jan Groover:
Photographs, with introductory text by John Szarkowski (1993).
Groover taught at the State University of New York College at Purchase before moving from her New York City base to her current residence in
Montpon-Menesterol, France, where she lives with her husband, Bruce Boice. A.W.
Frank Jay Haynes
American, 1853-1921
A member of the second generation of photographers of western American landscape and railroads, Frank Jay Haynes is often grouped with those who came
to the West much earlier. Stylistically and technically, however, as well as in terms of his approach to his subject, he is closer in outlook to the 20th century than
to the 19th.
Born in Saline, Michigan, Haynes worked in 1874 in Ann Arbor and Wisconsin, and in 1875 at the "Temple of Photography" of a "Dr." William
Lockwood. He opened his own studio the following year in Moorehead, Minnesota, and another in 1879 in Fargo, Dakota Territory. In 1876 he was appointed official
photographer of the Northern Pacific Railroad, a position he held for 30 years. Beginning in the early 1880s, Haynes worked in Yellowstone National Park, where
after 1884 he was its official, though self-employed, photographer. A 8,235-foot mountain peak in the park was named as a memorial for him after his death.
In 1891 the Puget Sound & Alaska Steamship Co. commissioned Haynes to photograph the sea journey from Tacoma, Washington, to Glacier
Bay, Alaska. From 1885-1905 his mobile Haynes' Palace Studio Car operated along the various lines of the Northern Pacific Railroad. He later moved to St. Paul,
Minnesota, where he established another studio. Haynes retired in 1916; his son, also a photographer, eventually continued the family business. T.W.F.
Jean-Jacques Heilmann
French, 1822-1859
Originally from Mulhouse, J. J. Heilmann made his living as a photographer, publisher, and printer in Pau, a town in southern France near the northern border
of the Pyrenees. Most of his work was produced between 1852-57. Using rapid collodion plates perfected by Adolphe Bertsch and Farnham Maxwell
Lyte, Heilmann also made calotypes and ivory types of considerable sophistication. In 1853 he developed a mechanism for enlarging negatives.
Heilmann frequently photographed the landscape of the Pyrenees, although he also did portraits, urban scenes, and photographic reproductions
of paintings of Alsace and Pau. His images often resemble those of Lyte and John Stewart, British photographers whose scenes of man and nature were
produced in the Pyrenees during the same era. Heilmann's photographs, however, have a more defined composition. His use of figures, animals, vehicles, and natural
elements reveals an interest in depicting civilized man in a primitive setting. A founding member of the Société française de photographie, Heilmann was also
affiliated with the Photographic Club of Great Britain. He exhibited his work at the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris. T.W.F.
David Octavius Hill
British, b. Scotland, 1802-1870; and
Robert Adamson
British, b. Scotland, 1821-1848
Brought together out of necessity, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson proved to be collaborators whose work was as inspired as its impact has been
long lasting. Hill was born in Perth to a family in the printing and publishing business. Trained as a painter, an occupation pursued throughout his life, Hill also was
an illustrator and lithographer. His earliest work,
Sketches of Scenery in Perthshire Drawn from Nature and on
Stone (1821), published before he was 20, was
one of the first in Britain to employ the new medium of lithography. In 1829 he helped found the Royal Scottish Academy, serving as secretary from 1830-70.
Hill turned to photography as an aid for a large group portrait of the 474 ministers who formed the new Free Church of Scotland. Noting the difficulties
of such a monumental task, photographic pioneer Sir David Brewster, an associate of William Henry Fox Talbot, introduced Hill to Robert Adamson (born
in Brunswick). Trained as an engineer, Adamson had learned the technique of photography from his brother John, whom Brewster had taught. The portraits
necessary for Hill's work were the beginning of their collaboration, the two working in Adamson's Edinburgh studio in 1843. Hill is generally thought to be the
artistic mind behind their images, while Adamson served as the technician responsible for the camera. This opinion among scholars, however, is shifting toward
greater recognition of Adamson's artistic skill.
After Adamson's early death in 1848, Hill stopped working entirely for 10 years before continuing in collaboration with A. McGlashan of Glasgow at
a considerably diminished level. The portraits by Hill and Adamson are known for their painterly, Old Master quality and exceptional use of light and shadow.
Other images include architecture, landscape, and a series on the small fishing village of Newhaven. T.W.F.
Lewis Hine
American, 1874-1940
Lewis Hine (born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin) was known for his photographs of early 20th-century immigrants, child laborers, and industrial workers. Trained as
a sociologist, he used his camera as a tool for social reform, creating a body of work reflective of his own humanistic vision and commitment to social justice.
Around 1903, while working as an instructor at the Ethical Culture School in New York City, Hine began experimenting with photography and the
following year undertook his first major project: recording newcomers to America as they entered through Ellis Island. Interested in countering prejudice against
immigrants, he portrayed them with dignity and compassion. In 1907 Hine joined the Pittsburgh Survey, a pioneering sociological study documenting the living
and working conditions of Pittsburgh's industrial workers, and the following year began work as an investigator and photographer for the National Child Labor
Committee. Over the next eight years he traveled thousands of miles, photographing children in mills, mines, canneries, tenement sweatshops, and on the street.
Toward the end of World War I, Hine photographed overseas for the American Red Cross and in the 1920s began
Work Portraits, a photographic series focusing on American workers. In 1930 he received a commission to photograph the construction of the Empire State Building, and a number of images
from this project and from Work Portraits appeared in his 1932 book
Men at Work. During the last decade of his life Hine worked for the Rural Electrical
Administration, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Work Projects Administration. In 1939 his photographs were featured in a retrospective exhibition at the
Riverside Museum, New York. M.M.
Nicholas C. Hlobeczy
American, 1927-
Nicholas Hlobeczy is a photographer, curator, and educator. His black-and-white and color photographs, detailing natural subjects, are as much about the
revelation of the creative process as they are about the clarity of the finished print. His ideology was decidedly influenced by his longtime friend and teacher,
Minor White.
Born in Swissvale, Pennsylvania, Hlobeczy studied at the Pittsburgh Institute of Art (1945-46) and the Cleveland Institute of Art (B.F.A. in painting,
1952) and then with White (1961-76), coordinating White's Cleveland-based workshops in 1963-66 and assisting in two workshops in Hotchkiss, New York.
Hlobeczy worked as a lithographer for the Photo Litho Plate Company in Cleveland from 1955-67, before moving to become head of the Cleveland Museum of Art's
photography department, a position he held until 1990. He teaches photography at Case Western Reserve University (1970-87 and 1990-present) and conducts
private workshops. Since 1952 Hlobeczy has been a regular participant in the Cleveland Museum of Art's May Show, a regional juried exhibition, winning
several awards. He also garnered first prize at the Yolo International in 1964. Hlobeczy lives in Cleveland Heights. A.W.
Paul Michel Hossard
French, 1878-1862
Although from 1843-45 amateur daguerreotypist Paul Michel Hossard made architectural views, landscapes, and portraits of family members, little but his
city scenes have entered public collections, with the majority held by the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Born in Angers, Hossard was trained as a surveyor and
cartographer, serving as an officer with the corps of geographic engineers under the Ministry of War (1824-45). In 1845 he was transferred to Paris and three years
later was assigned to the first military commission to determine the fate of the French Revolution's insurgents.
Hossard became a professor of astronomy and surveying at the École Polytechnique in 1855, retiring two years later. He committed suicide in Jarzé
in 1862. His work was prominently featured in Paris et le
daguerreotype at the Musée Carnavalet, Paris (1989-90). K.L.C.
The biograhies were written by Karen L. Churchill, Thomas Weston Fels, Maureen A. McKenna, and April Watson.
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