One Moment Here on Earth
Rip Griffith
A native of the American Southwest, Rip Griffith studied at the Juilliard School, the Universities of Corpus Christi and Texas, and New York University, from which he received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. Educated from childhood as a classical musician, he has worked both in photography and in music, performing with the Corpus Christi and San Antonio Symphonies, and served as principle oboist and associate conductor of the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, as well as producing sculpture and printed images derived from photographs, a medium in which he now exclusively works. His works have been exhibited in one-man shows throughout the United States and Europe, most notably at the Arleen Landers Gallery in Philadelphia, Central Square and Rockford Galleries in New Jersey, The Globe in Prague, Czech Republic and, most recently, Druids in New York City. He has taught Music, Sculpture, Color and Design and Photography at Atlantic College, and was Artist-in-Residence at Penn State University in Pennsylvania, before devoting full-time to his psychology practice in New York City, from which he is now retired. On a trip to Russia while photographing a ballet company, he became aware of the plight of homeless children there and spent several months of each year in St. Petersburg working with these children at a settlement house where they are taken off the streets, provided with shelter, food, clothing and life-skill instruction, helping to break the cycle of drugs, abuse and hopelessness that describes their lives. Images of these children form a core subject for Griffith’s photo work, as do his dance images. He now lives in St. Petersburg, Russia, and near New York City. Rip Griffith counts as his mentors such diverse masters as Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, W. Eugene Smith, Elliot Porter and Eugene Feldman, with whom he apprenticed to learn the art of photo-lithography.