Bill Rauhauser : 20th Century Photography in Detroit

Bill Rauhauser - 20th Century Photography in Detroit is an artist monograph with photographs by Bill Rauhauser and an essay by Mary Desjarlais. This book is essential for anyone interested in fine art photography or Detroit history.

Bill Rauhauser has been on the cutting edge of artistic movements throughout his life. He is a pioneer in the development of photographic culture in the city of Detroit and his outstanding Street Photography, taken over a period of sixty years, provides a unique historic archive of the city of Detroit. Starting during the forties through the present, Rauhauser photographed images that capture the rhythms of city street life in Detroit landscapes. Many of the buildings and houses no longer exist. Any of the millions of people who ever lived in Detroit would be interested in this book, to see Detroit as it changed over the century. Additionally, art history aficionados and photography collectors will find in this book a unique collection of exquisitely crafted photographs.

Rauhauser also explored studio, architectural photography, and portraiture. During the 1960s he began taking photos of found objects with a fresh approach, and his later abstractions of these objects are both whimsical and provocative experiments in form and composition. This photography has never been published and they are original masterpieces in Conceptual art.

Bill Rauhauser, born in Detroit in 1918, received a bachelor degree in Architectural Engineering in 1943 from the University of Detroit. He spent 18 years in the engineering field before a career change into the field of education. Over the next 30 years, Bill taught photography at The Center for Creative Studies (now College for Creative Studies), with 1 year as guest lecturer at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and 4 years at Wayne State University. He was appointed Professor Emeritus by CCS and is currently serving as Artist Advisor for the Board of Directors of the Dept. of Prints, Drawings and Photographs of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Bill is listed in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. The many exhibitions of his work include The Family of Man show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Bill has been involved in photography for over 60 years and opened the first Midwest gallery in 1964 to show only photographs. He has made Detroit his main subject, walking its streets and alleys with his camera from the 1940s, and many of his photographs are in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as well as in numerous private collections.

Book publications of his photographs include: Bill Rauhauser - 20th Century Photography in Detroit (2010); Beauty on the Streets of Detroit (2008); Detroit Auto Show Images of the 1970s (2007); Bob-Lo Revisited (2003); and Detroit Revisited (2000). He has also co-curated a number of exhibitions for the Detroit Institute of Arts, including The Car and the Camera in 1996.