Skip to main contentOver the past four decades, Portlandâs Blue Sky Gallery has risen from an upstart artistsâ collective to a mature, nationally recognized nonprofit photographic space. This major Portland Art Museum exhibition of more than 120 works by artists shown at Blue Sky demonstrates the critical role that the gallery has played in the reconsideration and establishment of photography as a fine art medium. The exhibition runs through January 11.
An excerpt from âAround the Table: An Interview with the Founders,â by Julia Dolan, the Portland Art Museumâs Minor White Curator of Photography, from Blue Sky: The Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts at 40.
On March 4, 2014, Robert Di Franco, Craig Hickman, Ann Hughes, and Chris Rauschenberg, the four surviving founders of Blue Sky Gallery, gathered in the Spence Conference Room of the Portland Art Museum to talk about the Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts.
The Lake Project 20, 2002, Chromogenic print, Portland Art Museum: The Blue Sky Gallery Collection, gift of James and Susan Winkler.
David Maisel
CRAIG HICKMAN: The precarious nature of photography, the way it was positioned in the art world, really worked to our advantage. At that time, we could sit around and decide what we wanted to show, and if there was somebody who was well known, some work we saw and liked, we just asked them to show, and they would say yes. You just canât do that anymore.
CHRIS RAUSCHENBERG: Portland wasnât on anybodyâs map, but I think it was a real photography hotbed nonetheless, for the people who knew about it. The Interim Group that was based on Minor White was giving workshops here and meeting even when Minor wasnât around, so I think there was a real photo community. When we opened Blue Sky, all the important photographers in the community looked at this group show that was everybody but them, and they thought, âWho are these fools?â There was a weird relationship between us and the existing photo community until there came a point when we decided to do this project called Eyes of a City that was an interactive CD-ROM that covered about twenty-five years of photography in Portland. And we went to all these people and said, âWeâre doing this thing about Portland being an important photo city, and you have to be in it.â I think that really changed the attitude with other people in the community. We always thought they were great; we just didnât think they quite fit at Blue Sky.
JULIA DOLAN: How about Nan Goldin? Her work can be challenging. Blue Sky doesnât always show easy work, of course, but The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is complicated, and it isnât for all audiences. How was the work received in Portland?
CHRIS RAUSCHENBERG: It was no big deal. The book had already come out, so it wasnât a discovery of ours. I remember actually taking the book off the shelf at Powellâs, and I looked at about four pages and thought, âOkay, I gotta buy this book!â Marvin Heiferman from Castelli Graphics and Photographs in New York had known about Blue Sky from the beginning, and when we offered this show to Nan Goldin, he told her to do it. The only precaution we took was to hang Bobby Masturbating so that no one could see if from the entryway. You had to walk into the gallery to see it. But nobody made any particular fuss about it at the time. People arenât too freaked out by this stuff in Portland.
Ocean no. 8/10, 2007, Inknet print, Portland Art Museum: The Blue Sky Gallery Collection, gift of Christopher Rauschenberg.
Martin Bogren
WWeek 2015