Robert Glenn Ketchum - Biography

In the centennial edition, Audubon magazine editors recognized 100 champions of conservation “who shaped the environmental movement in the 20th century.” Included with such luminaries as John Muir, Rachael Carson and David Brower, was photographer, Robert Glenn Ketchum. Ketchum has also been listed by American Photo as one of the 100 most important people in photography. In the past two years he has been given the Robert O. Easton Award for Environmental Stewardship, the Josephine and Frank Duveneck Humanitarian Award, and has been named Outstanding Photographer of the Year for 2001 by the North American Nature Photography Association, and Outstanding Person of the Year by Photo Media magazine. The diversity of these acknowledgments reflect a unique 30-year career in which Ketchum has dedicated his art to addressing issues of natural resource management and habitat protection. Combined with his personal activism, he and his work have been at the forefront of American artists expressing their concern for the state of the environment, and Ketchum has had remarkable success.

Author of 10 publications, including Overlooked In America: The Success and Failure of American Land Management and American Photographers and The National Parks as well as a contributor to Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Forestry and Tatshenshini River Wild, Ketchum has combined his publications with stunning printwork, target-specific exhibitions, lectures and direct lobbying to help establish wilderness lands, enhance national parks and further campaigns to preserve imperiled ecosystems. His book The Tongass: Alaska’s Vanishing Rain Forest has been credited with helping to pass the significant Tongass Timber Reform Legislation. For this he was given the United Nations Outstanding Environmental Achievement Award. He has also received the Ansel Adams Award for Conservation Photography, the Chevron-Times Mirror Magazines Conservation Award, and the UCLA Alumni Award for Excellence in Professional Achievement.

His work is represented in most of the major museum collections in the United States. Since 1968, he has had over 500 one-man and group shows worldwide. In 1979, he was one of twelve photographers invited to participate in the first photography exhibition ever held in The White House and, 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. In addition to his photography and writing, Ketchum is a founder and on the Board of Directors of Advocacy Arts Foundation. He is also a Trustee of the Alaska Conservation Foundation, and sits on the Board of Councilors of American Land Conservancy, and the Board of Directors of the Environmental Communications Office (ECO). He was previously Curator of Photography for the National Park Foundation for fifteen years. In the fall of 2002, Aperture released his most recent book, Rivers of Life: Southwest Alaska, the Last Great Salmon Fishery.

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photos: Robert Glen Ketchum