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Photography can now feel as ubiquitous as the sky above thanks to technology, or as mundane as a DMV headshot. But Blue Sky Gallery remembers the pre-iPhone world, exhibiting film and digital photography since it opened in 1975.
The Old Town gallery has kept excitement about photography’s creative possibilities alive as its commercial and purely documentarian uses threaten to steal its wonder. By choosing creatively daring artists, Blue Sky Gallery has set up provocateurs to elevate themselves into the medium’s esteemed vanguards. As its staff celebrates its first half-century, Blue Sky Gallery looks to its past to inspire the future of Portland’s photo community.
“Blue Sky has always been about community and risk-taking,” Kristin Solomon, the gallery’s executive director, said in a statement.
Starting in October, Blue Sky Gallery will stage bimonthly exhibitions of work by artists in its archives. Its inaugural decade show will include work by Steve Fitch (1979), Diane Neumaier (1981) and Marilyn Bridges (1981), who were early players in establishing the gallery’s reputation. Fitch honed his craft of documenting neon signs and cultural associations with the modern American West like giant dinosaur sculptures in deserts. Neumaier took photos of architecture early in her career, but went on to develop experimental photos and photograms, images made without cameras. Bridges took early aerial snaps of remote sacred sites around the world.
They were all early in their careers, and loaned Blue Sky the legitimacy it would take to earn loyal donors and weather catastrophes like the pandemic and the Great Recession. It all seemed to be for one reason.
“We believe photography inspires empathy,” Solomon says during a tour of the first-decade show.
Originally called the Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, Blue Sky was founded in the neighborhood now known as the Pearl District by five artists: Robert DiFranco, Craig Hickman, Ann Hughes, Terry Toedtemeier and Christopher Rauschenberg, whose late father Robert was a neo-Dada, Pop Art icon. Rauschenberg still serves as the president of Blue Sky’s board of directors, which includes Hickman. The founding artists pooled resources to make a dedicated space to show photography in all its forms. The gallery’s modern three-space layout includes walls where other artists can regularly show their work. Sometimes the art goes beyond two dimensions. Michael Espinoza, for instance, embroiders Polaroids of queer men, melding mediums to make statements on gay sexuality. Espinoza’s work can be found among other Pacific Northwest photographers in a dedicated drawer of prints.
Accessibility is one of Blue Sky’s leading values, both for artists and collectors. Prints will be priced at a cool $200, affordable for most collectors seeking pieces of independently made fine art. Next summer, when the decades series concludes, five sets of 25 commemorative postcards get printed from a cache of fan-favorite images voted on by Blue Sky patrons over the next year. But those seeking something more exclusive will enjoy the gallery’s bicoastal celebrations in New York on Sept. 19 and back in Portland on Oct. 5 atop the DeSoto Building that has housed Blue Sky since 2007.
Staff has recently begun the arduous task of archiving shows by the thousand-plus photographers whose work Blue Sky has displayed into a searchable database. Much of the work for Blue Sky’s next half-century centers on keeping the gallery accessible to visitors with no admission fees, artists with low-barrier exhibition opportunities like open free submissions, and collectors with affordable prints. But the one thing from Blue Sky’s first 50 years that seems unlikely to change during the next is its commitment to inspiring awe in photography. Even if it’s too early to say what it will look like by 2075, Blue Sky will hopefully be there holding space for it.
“We hope to make it another 50 years,” Solomon says.
SEE IT: Blue Sky Gallery’s Rooftop 50th Birthday, 122 NW 8th Ave., 503-225-0210, blueskygallery.org. 6 pm Sunday, Oct. 5. $50–$100.
