Born in London, Paula Rae Gibson took up photography in her early 20's after a car accident that almost took her life. Leaning mainly on analogue and darkroom work, though more lately in digital too, her work is a diary of her emotions and a way to get to know herself and the world in a deeper way. She explores themes of vulnerability, loss and love, playing with timelessness. All her prints are unique, edition of one.
In repairing the object you really end up loving it more, because you now know its eagerness to be reassembled, and in running a fingertip over its surface you alone can feel its many cracks. ― Nicholson Baker
To describe Paula Rae Gibson’s work as imperfect would be to engage in gross understatement, and to entirely miss the point of why she makes her photographs. Her images are more than altered, they are distressed. Their surfaces have been marred and abraded. Whatever markers of perfection her subjects may have originally possessed have been written over by a seeming obsession with erasure and cancellation. These are anxious images, injured objects.The work is also riveting, stunning really, in its vulnerability, violent tenderness, and naked heartbreak. It’s catalyst was the untimely cancer diagnosis and eventual death of Gibson’s husband. This when their daughter was only 20 months old.
What tongue does trauma speak? What is the antidote for this level of loss? Gibson’s images are not palliative, they do not soothe, salve, relieve, or release. Instead, they capture the visceral anguish of loss, inscribed in a grammar where all nouns are objects of desire, and all verbs are executed as energy on the surface, in unrelenting signals of grief.
Gibson uses the female body – most often her own – as a private language that is autobiographical and confessional. We are invited into a personal landscape where bodies and gestures are supercharged with meaning and significance, and offered a glimpse of a privileged vocabulary – an emotional shorthand, a somatic sign language.
These images don’t feel like photographs, because details and specifics have melted and dissolved. They are images on the verge of self immolation, ablaze with raw emotion, where the photographic surface functions as a metaphorical second skin, making visible the wounds and trauma buried beneath the surface.
Gibson immerses us in a song, a lamentation, an incantation attempting to conjure, reanimate a fleshy, carnal core. Finger, feel. Brush, skim. Graze, stroke. Caress, fondle, embrace.Touch. Hold.
This is a strange, dark beauty. One made all the more piercing and seductive because it is written on the body. And these bodies, like chipped and misshapen vessels, are all the more beautiful because their surface bears witness to the marks of history. This wearing down is relentless and mournful, but it also reveals a wounded radiance – harmony, grace, hopeful resilience. Reminding us that nothing is perfect. Nothing lasts. That life and love is still, always, unfinished.
Joseph Squier, Light sensitivity
PRINT SALES-Katybarron100@gmail.com
SOLO EXHIBITIONS-
ROTTERDAM PHOTO FESTIVAL 2024
Stephan Witschi Gallery October 2020
ROTTERDAM PHOTO FESTIVAL 2020
PH21 Budapest September 2017
Someone's Garden Tokyo 2009
Stephanie Hoppen London 2007
Paul Kopeikin Gallery LOS ANGELES 2001
Laurie Frank's Media Rare Gallery LOS ANGELES 2001
Serena Morton, LONDON 1999
Adam Prideaux, Cork Street London 1998
GROUP SHOWS -
Self Portrait from Diary of a Love Addict, showing at Copa Gallery Bankok 2024
Revel-t festival June 2022.
Royal Scottish Academy Summer Exhibition, June 2022.
Fermentino Foto Festival, ITALY 2022
Royal Academy of Arts, Summer Exhibition curated by Yinka Shonibare '‘Reclaiming Magic’. Photograph' Above' selected.
The Fragile Self- Self in Covid Feb 2020
Experimental Photo Festival. Janruary 2021 intervened.
The Griffin Museum - September 2019. Do I love you still when I'm still.
The Midwest Centre of Photography-Woman's Story Untold. jULY 2019
Exposition IWI_Collective with The Big Picture – RedLine Contemporary Art Center – Denver, Colorado (USA), April
The Big Picture Colorado, MOPDenver (USA), April
Analog Forever, Private Document
Ordinary Creatures, JUROR R.J Kern, Lenscratch.April 2019
Leica Gallery, connecting with personal projects,Nancy Kaye, ASMP,March 2019
Month of Photography Denver, PRG exhibits with IWI Collective, curatored by Mark Sink.Feb 2019
Der Greif curator Italian Vogue editor Alessia Glaviano, from series Nearest Dearest.
Julia Margaret Cameron 11th EDITION , 5th biennial of fine art photography , Barcelona October 2018.10 photographs to be shown, honourable mention.
The art of living photography show, curator David Garrick, month of photography San Francisco
Barcelona international photography award.2018
The Center for Fine Art Photography, juror Catherine Couturier,black and white awards, image SENT.2018
The Face exhibition Darkroom Gallery, Juror Catherine Just
In Response, The Center for Fine Art Photography, November, 'Happy in her own skin' photograph of trans girl , aged 14.
Viewpoint gallery,Halifax, Nova Scotia, image Hope shown, August 2017
Patagonia Photo festival April 13-17 2017
Float zine group show HOME April 2017
PH21 Gallery group show Scapes, April 2017
Photoplace Gallery ,Alternative processes exhibition ,Dan Burkholder juror,April 2017
NYC4PA group show at Jadite Galley April 2017
Beyond the Selfie , SE Centre of Photography. Feb 2017
Group Show Portraits, Blank Wall Space , Athens.4 Feb-17 2017
PH21 Gallery, Budapest, Hungary.Feminine / Masculine Exhibition, Honourable Mention,
Jan-Feb 2017
OXYGEN | Bogotá 2017 International Experimental Video and Performance Art Festival
Month of Photography Los Angeles Group Show ,Lucie Foundation 2017
Honorable mention-Heart Off The Hook.
PH21 Gallery, Budapest, Hungary .Solo Exhibition competition, December 2016 .
DARKROOM GALLERY ,HAUNTED 2016
F STOP MAGAZINE, BODY AND HAPPY ACCIDENTS 2016
Brighton Fringe Group Show Summer 2016
LOOSEN ART EXHIBITION 2016
PH21 gallery Budapest,2016
SeeMe Digital Display at The Louvre in Paris, France (July 13, 2015 Private Event)
ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY BATH, 2015
RAYKO PHOTO CENTER SAN FRANCISCO 2015
Fermentino Foto Festival, ITALY 2015
Fotographie Frankfurt Forum,how to hang a book, Celina Lunsford 2006
BOOKS PUBLISHED
RAE EYEMAZING EDITIONS. 2016
I'LL ALWAYS WALK AWAY KEHRER 2007
DIARY OF A LOVE ADDICT KEHRER 2005
AWARDS
Winner of Fine Art Series , Julia Margaret Cameron award 2023.
Mobile Photography Prize Book project, 2022
Nominee at the 15th Annual International Color Awards with for fine art category and nude category. 2022
17th Pollux awards, honorable mention fine art series. Jam 2022
Ph Musuem PhMuseum 2021
16TH Pollux Awards , fine art series, honorable mention 2021
14th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards WINNER in Women seen by Women.JURY- Elizabeth Avedon, Rebecca Richardson, and Analy Werbin. DECEMBER 2020
IPA AWARD HONORABLE MENTION for book price IMPlOSION, 2019
HUMAN REPRESENTATION –Linda Robinson, PORTRAIT - INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION,Midwest Center for Photography,Franklin, USA. Hear It In My Spirit.
South x Southeast Photogallery, Molena, Celina Lunsford jury, I"m Coming Home. June 2019
Honorary award, Julia Margaret Cameron prize for Portrait and Fine Art 2019
The Face exhibition Darkroom Gallery, Juror Catherine Just
Response exhibition at The Center for Fine Art Photography. Image chosen, Rain,2018.
WE ARE LOVE TOO Studio Award winner in the Art of Living Photography competition,published on the Bokeh Bokeh Photo website and shown at the ACCI Gallery in Berkeley, California
Juried exhibition Abstraction, two photos from her series"Without You I'm Nothing' chosen by Blue Mitchell for Darkroom Gallery , Vermont.
Shortlist for Athens Photo Festival 2017
Fotofilmic 17 spring shortlist winner.
Tokyo Foto Awards, Honorable mention, loosing you over and over til I find you again.
One of the 12 winner of the Viewpoint International Photo Competition, with HOPE.
Photo place, Vermont Alternative Process exhibition,juror Dan Burkholder.
Winner of LA Curator, What Remains competition, with Late Dad. 2017
NYC4PA jurors selection chosen by Mark Sink ,Black and White 2017
Photoplace juried exhibition Composed, juror Sam Abell
2016/2 SOLO competition at PH21 GalleryHonourable mention
Black and White Spider Award ,Fine Art Category 2016 Honorary mention.
Melbourne Photo Award finalist, "Late Husband", 2016 nominated by Rogar Ballen
Honorary award,LA curator Secrets and Mysteries,2016
Honorary award, Julia Margaret Cameron prize for Children,Portrait and Fine Art
Honorary award, Moscow Foto Awards, "Destination Love", 2014
Best eleven self-portrait series, "You and Your Selfies", Lensculture, 2014
MAGAZINE FEATURES.
Der Greif Q AND A FEATURE, July 2023
SIDE BY SIDE GALLERY FEATURE, ON VULNERABILITY, MARCH 2023
ZERO NINE MAGAZINE,FEATURE, IN SEARCH FOR BEAUTY.
The Woven Tale Press Janruary 2022
Pain and it's wings L'oeil de la photographie
Analogue Magazine, October 2021
BRENDA MAGAZINE , MAY 2021
BLACKHAUS MAGAZINE, MAY 2021
Unvael Magazine. Feature.Issue 6/
Brenda Magazine. Feature. DEC 20220
Lightsensitive http://lightsensitive.media/paula-rae-gibson/
Punchdrunkpress
Nihilsentimentalgia
The Amorist
The Woven Tale PRess
Elyston Gunn First Edition magazine.
Art Reveal Magazine
EYEMAZING fear 2010
Silvershot Australia
Someone’s Garden
Passion China