Signed Ralph Gibson [ VERY RARE ] - Infanta - 1995

Very rare signed copy on the title page. 120 pages, 115 black and white photographs, including 102 full-page images, introduction in English by Alexandra Anderson-Spivy and afterword by Mary Gaitskill. Black cloth binding with illustrated dust jacket. In excellent condition. Shipped in , fully protected packaging with postal tracking.

The nude photography has served as a source of inspiration since the earliest known depictions. Ralph Gibson makes no secret of the passions that drive him: his love of photography and his love of women are two impulses of the heart that converge in a tribute to female beauty. *Infanta* is an in-depth study by one of the most acclaimed and influential fine-art photographers.

For Ralph Gibson, photographing the nude is akin to a musician practicing scales on an instrument. His nudes take up a challenge that bridges traditional art and photography. "A woman is neither a fact nor a metaphor," he observes, "and as such, she moves within an atmosphere of glamour."

The 115 images created between 1988 and 1994 celebrate the compelling mystery of the female body—as depicted by Velázquez and Manet—while reflecting Gibson's own contemporary aesthetic concerns. The title *Infanta* stems from a visit to the Prado Museum, where the photographer was struck by Velázquez’s *Las Meninas*. Gibson was deeply moved by this 1656 masterpiece and the complex relationship between the artist and the subject. He was attuned to the implications of the mirror reflection, the enigmatic presence (or absence) of the artist, and the existential ambiguity of the gaze—elements that, in *Infanta*, sit alongside Gibson’s own preoccupations with gravity, the weight of volumes, and the interplay between negative shapes and the positive forms that generate them. (from the publisher).