ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM  

Biography Artist and author, Robert Glenn Ketchem was born, and lived in Los Angeles for forty-nine years. He received his BA cum laude from UCLA, and his MFA from California Institute of the Arts, where he was also part of the faculty during the 1970s.

For 15 years, he served as Curator of Photography for the National Park foundation in Washington, DC, and prior to that was Executive Director and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies, whose board he has recently rejoined. He is also on the Board of Directors of Advocacy Arts Foundation and Earth Communications Office (ECO), the Board of Trustees of the Alaska Conservation Foundation and the Board of Councilors of the American Land Conservancy.

His work is represented in most of the major collections in the United States, and since 1968 he has had over 400 one-man and group shows worldwide at diverse institutions such as the National Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Carnegie, the Taiwan Museum of Art, and at International Photokina. In 1979, he was one of only twelve photographers invited to participate in the first photography exhibition ever held in The White House, and at the request of the American Embassy in Brazil, in June of 1992, he was given a one-man exhibition at the National Museum of Fine arts in Rio de Janeiro, representing American art at the UNCED/ "Earth Summit" Conference. Author of Overlook in America: The Success and Failure of Federal Land Management (1991, Aperture), The Tongass: Alaskas Vanishing Rain Forest (1987 1st ed., 1994 2nd ed., Aperture), The Hudson River and the Highlands (1985, Aperture), and American Photographers and the National Parks (1980, Viking Press); a contributing photographer to Tatshenshini River Wild and Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Forestry; and principal photographer for Presidio Gateways (1994, Chronicle Books) and Seafarm: The Story of Aquaculture (1997, Harry N. Abrams), Ketchum has used the subjects of his books as metaphors for larger, national and international environmental issues.

He has also been one of the first contemporary photographers to wed his work with his personal activism. Using direct lobbying, lectures, and exhibitions (in the Capitol), he has succeeded in affecting significant environmental legislation and reform.

Recognizing his effort in this regard, the United Nations gave him their Outstanding Environmental Achievement Award, naming him to their Global 500 Roll of Honor. He has also received the Chevron-Times Mirror Magazines Conservation Award, the Sierra Clubs Ansel Adams Award for Conservation Photography, and the WCLA Alumni Award for Excellence in Professional Achievement. In 1992 the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Cornell University organized a major traveling retrospective of his work that is now in international circulation. In conjunction with that traveling show, Aperture published the monograph, The Legacy of Wildness: The Photographs of Robert Glenn Ketchum a 25-year survey of his career. Aperture has also recently released Ketchums newest book, Northwest Passage which documents a single season private yacht crossing of the Arctic. The collective photographs provide a spectacular overview of this barely understood ecosystem and a traveling exhibition of prints from this work began a national tour in June of 1997 with an opening at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House.

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