Born and raised in upstate NY to a recently widowed military wife, Richard G. Ramsdell received his first camera when he was 5 (a bribe to be his aunts' ring bearer). By 12 he had escaped to the safety of a laundry-room darkroom, choosing print-making over camera work. It was then that he began a life-long obsession with found/collected/appropriated imagery.

 

Ramsdell graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology, Salzburg College and the University of Florida. From the '80s through the early '00s he gathered a number of fellowships, grants and (inter)national exhibitions. In '91 he began working digitally and in '02 this work transitioned into experimental video under the alias Nietzsche Jones.

 

He returned in 2015 to creating 2d visual art and began publishing digital books as well. Two of these are his unconventional illustration and design of Sun Tzu's The Art of War and the original story Urban Legend: The True Story of the Cooper Family Falling Body Photo, (from the eponymous internet hoax based on an image that unknown to Ramsdell, the creator, had been appropriated from one of his early websites).

 

Ramsdell continues to utilize the appropriated image as he enters the next phase of his career. He lives in Sarasota, Florida.