February 29 – March 26, 1976
In 1975 I was in New York getting ready for a solo show at 112 Green Street Gallery when my father asked me if I wanted to come with him to India to help him make prints there for Gemini G.E.L. I was only able to be there for three weeks because of my upcoming show. While working there, I was only seeing India going by in a blur from the car, and it was a frustrating to be in such an amazing place without having time to walk around and photograph. I thought of a Julie Mihaly photograph that opened my eyes to the idea of camera motion as a technique rather than a deadly flaw. My idea was to embrace the “going by in a blur” as my record of what I was seeing. Ultimately I had to recognize that what worked for Julie and others didn’t work for me. I had to accept that I just am an “f64” everything-in-focus photographer and that this would be my only game playing for “team blur.”
I was born in New York in 1951, have practiced photographic art since 1957, and have a B.A. in photography from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.
I’ve had over 130 solo shows in eight countries. Available monographs of my work include three books, 21 print-on-demand books and a deck of cards. My work is held in the collections of 13 major museums.
In 1995, I organized a group of a dozen artists who joined me in a nine year long systematic photographic exploration and documentation of the city of Portland.(www.PortlandGridProject.com) I photographed for the first two rounds (1995 to 2013) and round four is now in progress.
In 1997 and 1998, I took three trips to Paris and rephotographed 500 of the images made of that city by Eugene Atget between 1890 and 1927, resulting in the Book Paris Changing.
I’m a co-founder, co-curator and Board Chairman of Blue Sky Gallery where, over the last 47 years, I have co-curated and co-produced over 1000 exhibitions. I am a co-founder and past president of Photolucida (a Portland photography festival formerly called Photo Americas). I am a co-founder and current member of the co-op Nine Gallery. I have edited and produced hundreds of art and photography publications. I am the 2003 Bonnie Bronson Fellow.
christopherrauschenberg.com