Robert Glenn Ketchum (1947) For 40 years Robert Glenn Ketchum’s imagery and books have helped to define contemporary color photography while at the same time addressing critical national environmental issues, and have made him one of the most successful artist/activists in American history. As an undergraduate at UCLA, Ketchum studied with Edmund Teske and Robert Heinecken. His first published photographs were of 1960’s era rock bands, including The Doors, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Donovan and Traffic. Mentoring with Leland Rice during post-graduate work at California Institute of the Arts (MFA, ’74), Ketchum expanded his discipline from black & white to color and began to focus on the natural world and the legislative policies that manipulate it. What has transpired since is a notable legacy to both art and nature. Ketchum and close friend, master printer Michael Wilder, pioneered Cibachrome color printmaking in the early 1970’s.

They were also among the first contemporary photographers to explore print scale. The distinctive prints are in numerous collections including the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the National Museum of American Art (DC), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), to name a few. Significant archives (more than 100 images) have been acquired by the Amon Carter Museum (TX) and the Huntington Library (CA), and substantial bodies of work can be found at the High Museum in Atlanta, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Akron Art Museum (OH), Stanford University Art Museum (CA), the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Cornell University (NY), and the National Museum of American Art. As a curator and author, Ketchum has published with Abrams, Viking, and has 7 individual titles with Aperture. Prior to his emergence as a photographer, he was a widely recognized curator, discovering the Paul Outerbridge, Jr. estate, bringing recognition to the overlooked work of James Van Der Zee, and authoring the historical classic, American Photographers and the National Parks. Since publication of this last title, he has concentrated primarily on his own politically focused projects and publications such as The Tongass: Alaska’s Vanishing Rain Forest (Aperture, NY, 1986).

He is perhaps most recognized for his work in the Tongass, which is credited with helping to pass the Tongass Timber Reform Bill of 1990. This significant legislation established 5 major wilderness areas and simultaneously protected more than one million acres of old-growth trees in the largest temperate rainforest in the world. Ketchum’s work has been similarly integral to many other diverse environmental struggles including the development of a Hudson River Greenway from the Adirondacks to Manhattan; the enlargement of Saguaro National Park and mitigation of neighboring resort developments; the acquisition of World Biosphere status for the Tatshenshini River corridor, Canada and the U.S. (2 million acres); the defense of one of the great whale nurseries in San Ignacio Lagoon (Baja) from industrial development by Mitsubishi; creating three new state parks in California; guiding the future planning of “gateway communities” – cities and towns that lie adjacent the entrance to national parks; several scathing critiques of federal land management policies (Overlooked in America: The Success and Failure of Federal Land Management and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Forestry); popularizing the Arctic and its beauty to underscore the threat to it from global warming; and, contributing to an internet library of images and scientific information about Russia’s wild biological reserves. Most recently he has been part of the largest land conservancy negotiation in the history of California, purchasing the conservation easements to the entirety (83,000 acres) of San Simeon Ranch, the well known William Randolph Hearst estate, for which he is the exclusive photographer. American Photo magazine named Ketchum one of the 100 most important people in photography, and Audubon placed him among the 100 people “who shaped the environmental movement of the 20th Century.” Other acknowledgments suggest the breadth that the imprint of his work has had: the United Nations Outstanding Environmental Achievement Award; the Josephine and Frank Duveneck Humanitarian Award; the Robert O. Easton Award for Environmental Stewardship; the UCLA Alumni Award for Excellence in Professional Achievement; the Ansel Adams Award for Conservation Photography; and Outstanding Photographer of the Year (2001) from the North American Nature Photography Association.

Aside from his commitment to his art, Ketchum has had a lifelong dedication to public service founding Advocacy Arts Foundation and serving as board member or councilor to the Alaska Conservation Foundation, the American Land Conservancy, and the Alaska Wildlife Alliance. Previously, he was Curator of Photography for the National Park Foundation for 15 years, and was a member of the board, vice-president, and president of the formative Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies during the 1970’s. In the fall of 2006, the Amon Carter Museum of Fort Worth, TX will display a 35-year retrospective of Ketchum’s work, comparing and contrasting his imagery and accomplishments with a large selection of photographs from the Eliot Porter Archive. An extensive publication, Regarding the Land: Robert Glenn Ketchum and the Legacy of Eliot Porter will accompany the exhibition.

The work of Robert Glenn Ketchum is featured in these exhibitions.

(Select the image to view the exhibition page)

Design By Nature

Nature’s Palette

Messages From The Wilderness

Designed By Nature

The work of Robert Glenn Ketchum is featured in these Theme Collections.

(Select the image to view the theme page)

American South

American West

Environment – Color

Landscape – Color

Seascapes – Color

Studies of Light – Color

Water

Cibachrome Prints: Elusive and Beautiful

Cibachrome is the Moby Dick of rare photographic printing processes. Many a Captain Ahab has gone trolling through deep waters in search of the scarce paper and chemicals that are needed to produce these sought after prints. After the chemistry needed to create Cibachrome was discontinued a few years ago, some photographers squirreled away enough supplies to last a few years in large freezers. When this hoard runs out, no new Cibachromes can be printed.READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

Noatak Rainbow, 1997

Cibachrome, which later came to be known as Ilfochrome, after the Ilford Company bought the process, is a dye destruction positive-to-positive photographic process used to reproduce film transparencies (slide film) on photographic paper. What makes Cibachrome unique is that instead of having a traditional paper base, Cibachrome prints are made on a stable polyester base. It also uses 13 layers of Azo dyes sealed in the polyester base. Most papers have a surface that is coated with an emulsion. Cibachrome’s design lessens the chances that prints will fade, discolor or deteriorate for an extended time, according to archival experts.

Sumac Along the Chattahoochee, 1987

Robert Glenn Ketchum, whose work can be seen in this post and additional images on his artist page, is one of several well known landscape photographers who value Cibachrome’s ability to faithfully reproduce the images captured on slide film in the pre-digital era. Natal Rainbow, 1997, Blossoms in the Twilight, 1986, Sumac Along the Chattahoochee, 1987 and The Te-conic Parkway, North to Albany #27, 1983 are but a few examples.

As an environmental activist, Ketchum feels that his photographs must reflect the grandeur of nature with few embellishments. Since Ketchum regularly takes on projects that defy the interests of big business and industry, his work must be a realistic document of the land he is trying to preserve. At a recent symposium at the Booth History Museum in Georgia, Ketchum said his photographs can not be open to charges of manipulation.

Blossoms in the Twilight, 1986

Though Cibachrome’s complicated history of ownership and production, is too lengthy to elaborate on completely, here are some of the basics. Hungarian scientist Dr. Bela Gaspar created Gasparcolor, the dye bleach process upon which the Cibachrome process was originally based, in 1933. Gasparcolor was used primarily in animation and for United States military reconnaissance photography during World War II.

Though Gaspar turned down many offers to sell the rights to his process, after his death, his associate, Paul Dreyfus, later developed the process for a Swiss company called Ciba AG, according to the book, Frozen Moments by Richard C. Miller. Ciba acquired Ilford in 1969,
and sold it to International Paper in 1989.
In 1992 the product was renamed “Ilfochrome”.

Eventually, like many other analog processes, Cibachrome and most of the slide films it was printed from, have given way to digital capture and ink jet printing. Unlike other art forms such as painting or sculpture, the availability of photographic materials has often been driven by the consumer market. Cibachrome was always more in the provenance of professional and fine art photographers because it is difficult and time consuming to use.

In our current digital era, slide films and Cibachrome printing have been come almost as rare as sightings of the great white whale.

American Photo Master Series: Robert Glenn Ketchum

Robert Glenn Ketchum

Vanishing Alaska - Robert Glenn Ketchum