FOUR DECADES: Ron Geibert

A retrospective showing featuring color street photography, installations, Orwellian prints, and electronic kiosks and complemented with historical photographs and collection highlights.

It is common for artists to work with a particular theme, problem, or issue for long periods. For instance, photographer Ron Geibert was a color documentarian for 20 years, experimented with installation art for several years, and then with multimedia and Orwellian issues on deception in language and the oversaturation of stimuli for another 20. Sometimes, though, one can find oneself exploring revised ideas, new ideas, and old ideas at the same time. Recently he has expanded his exploration of books started in 2004, briefly returned to using a camera and darkroom, next an iPhone, and then used obsolete software to create modified versions of electronic kiosks created from 1995 to 2003.

CHANGE. It usually arrives in unexpected ways and is faced with little enthusiasm. But there are times when it is sought out and thoroughly engaged. This has been the case with Geibert. Acknowledging that the printed book is perhaps an instrument destined for obsolescence, his plates nevertheless take the viewer on a visual tour of the beauty and beguiling power of images and text found within the pages. His panoramic “sliver” prints are a return to ideas from 2007—but now illustrating information conveyed more by bits and pieces in the digital age. Traditional silver prints provide a brief return to his undergraduate days and panoramic inkjet prints using an iPhone with the ideas discovered in his “sliver” exploration.