All about me
Born and raised in NYC, Robert A. Ripps finds the unexpected in the commonplace, creating humanistic images that capture a personal moment in time. A theme that runs throughout his work is an examination of how human civilization and nature interact.
His latest personal project, Negativityness, is a response to the political climate right now- everything seems to be about negativity, about division, about what is truth (and what is inarguably false, yet touted as truth). It is about how the surface of things can be 180 degrees opposite from what is underneath, it is about falsehoods and unseen influence. It is about discordance, about disorientation, about a world turned upside down and inside out.
It has since grown to encompass the consequences (and possible fantastical outcomes) of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the effects of ever increasing and cataclysmic climate change. What would happen if nature took hold, if vegetation overgrew the familiar and transformed it into something altogether different and foreign looking, but also strangely beautiful?
Robert's first monograph Urban Trees was published in 2014, in which he tries to answer the question, how does a tree grow in Brooklyn, or in other cities, where people and concrete are constantly encroaching?
In 2009, his first book She's Out There! The Next Generation of Presidential Candidates was published, featuring portraits of 35 young future female leaders of America, taken in distinct locations throughout the United States. The book examined the lives, visions and political ambitions of a diverse cross section of 35 American women between the ages of 5 and 35, through personal essays and environmental portraits of the subjects.
Robert has won numerous awards- inclusion in Lürzer's Archive Edition 6 - 200best [digital artists] and American Photography 36 annual award books, an IPA Int’l Photography Award, multiple honors from Photo District News (PDN), well as being a part of the American Photography 35, 37 & 38 online archives and the Polaroid collection.
He has exhibited his work nationally, and his most recent solo show, Negativityness Abounds, ran at the Christine Frechard Gallery in Pittsburgh, PA in the summer of 2021. In 2020, his work was included in the exhibit #ICPConcerned, a selection of photographs collected from the ICP Concerned hashtag on Instagram, and on display at ICP in New York.
A longtime member of ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers), he has served on the Board of the NY Chapter. Robert is also a long standing member of APA (American Photographic Artists), where he was on the NY board for many years, before serving as a National Vice President for four years.
When not traveling around the globe for business and pleasure, or seeking out new and exotic pork dishes, he resides downtown in NYC, with his many houseplants.