Robert Glenn Ketchum

March 7 - July 21, 2020, "Robert Glenn Ketchum & Eliot Porter: On Seeing Color", Booth Museum of Western Art, Cartersville, GA (55-year retrospective of 60+ prints)

September 16, 2006 - January 7, 2007- Robert Glenn Ketchum and Eliot Porter: Regarding the Land", Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX (40-year retrospective)

After the publication of this last title, Ketchum began to concentrate on environmentally focused projects. Although his conservation photography encompasses many areas from Mexico to Canada, his most influential work was done in Alaska, the location of four books with Aperture. His book The Tongass: Alaska's Vanishing Rain Forest (1987) was instrumental in helping to pass the Tongass Timber Reform Bill of 1990. He subsequently turned his attention to Southwest Alaska with Rivers of Life: Southwest Alaska, The Last Great Salmon Fishery (2001) and Wood-Tikchik: Alaska¹s Largest State Park (2003), advocating for the protection of Bristol Bay from the industrial invasion of oil and gas leasing and the largest open pit mine in the world. In 2010, the Obama administration withdrew Bristol Bay from oil and gas lease consideration.

Prior to his emergence as a photographer, he was a widely recognized curator, discovering the Paul Outerbridge, Jr. estate, and bringing recognition to the overlooked work of James Van Der Zee. He was also Curator of Photography for the National Park Foundation for 15 years, and in this capacity authored American Photographers and the National Parks (1981).

Ketchum attended high school at the Webb School of California. He received a B.A. in design from UCLA and a MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1974. He studied photography under the direction of Edmund Teske and Robert Heinecken. After he graduated he began a lifelong friendship with Eliot Porter, who helped form his ideas about photography and about how photography can be used to help change the world. His commitment to conservation photography is unique amongst academically-trained photographers.

Ketchum and his close friend master printer Michael Wilder pioneered Cibachrome color printmaking in the early 1970s. They were also among the first contemporary photographers to explore print scale. Ketchum's very dimensional prints large color prints were distinctive at that time.

Robert Glenn Ketchum (born December 1, 1947) is pioneering conservation photographer, recognized by Audubon magazine as one of 100 people "who shaped the environmental movement in the 20th century.".