Robert Rauschenberg as Photographer

The artist Robert Rauschenberg was always interested in bringing a full range of media to his artworks—he’s most famous, after all, for his “Combines” of 1954-1964, works that, as the name suggests, combined non-traditional materials from various disciplines, such as painting and sculpture. But just how much of an interest Rauschenberg had in photography, and its importance in his work, is made clear in a new book from D.A.P./Schirmer/Mosel, “Robert Rauschenberg: Photographs 1949-1962.”

“It is surprising how little attention Rauschenberg’s photographs have gotten, considering it was his primary interest,” said David White, Rauschenberg’s curator from 1980 until the artist’s death in 2008, and co-editor of the book. Under the tutelage of figures such as Hazel Larsen Archer and Aaron Siskind at Black Mountain College in North Carolina in the late forties, Rauschenberg “wasn’t sure if he wanted to pursue a career as a photographer or painter, and in a way ended up doing both,” White told me. But it was his paintings that always took precedence in exhibitions, and which garnered the most attention. As a result, “the photographs fell by the wayside,” White surmised. “Not that he ever saw it that way.”

Here is a selection of Rauschenberg’s photographs.

An exhibition of Rauschenberg’s personal art collection opens this evening at the Gagosian Gallery.

Photographs courtesy Estate of Robert Rauschenberg/VAGA, New York.