March 21 – April 16, 1980
Taking to heart (and taking literally) Robert Capa’s profound advice “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough,” I produced this series of tableaux of “unimportant” domestic scenes seen from the perspective of a tiny being.
In 1979 I became dissatisfied with my need to strictly compositionally control exactly what was in the frame of my images, and I was interested in trying out a more panoramic aspect ratio for my photographs. When I told the photographer Ford Gilbreath about my interest in getting a Widelux panorama camera for those reasons, he told me that he was also wanting one, so we bought it together and took turns using it for a month at a time each.
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