Andrew Bush

Woman caught in traffic while heading southwest on U.S. Route 101 near the Topanga Canyon Boulevard exit, Woodland Hills, California, at 5:38 p.m. in the summer of 1989

Andrew Bush Biography Andrew Bush graduated from Yale University with an MFA in Photography in 1982 and has been pursuing the Vector Portraits series since he moved to Los Angeles in 1989. Andrew Bush's photography has been exhibited extensively in solo and group shows, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College (Wellesley, Massachusetts) and Staatliche Kunsthalle (Baden-Baden, Germany). Photographer Andrew Bush's work is held in prominent public collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The George Eastman House (Rochester, New York) and The Victoria & Albert Museum (London). Andrew Bush currently resides in Los Angeles. Andrew Bush documents the car culture of Southern California and of middle America too: Camaros, Impalas, Trans Ams, Porsches and VW Beetles and the drivers who express their personality through the cars they drive. In this strange limbo space, both public and private, Bush captures the inherent mystery of and fascination with other people. The evocative work has been compared to Walker Evans’ classic, equally voyeuristic photographs of New York City subway riders from 1938-1941. Using a medium format camera on a tripod both placed in the passenger’s seat and a strobe light for a flash, Bush’s photos are guerrilla chronicles of people in the midst of driving (and often unaware they are being photographed) down the highway. Bush records the diversity of people and the cars that contain them in a highly narrative, seductive style that suggests film stills: an African American family in a tomato red Cadillac, a tattooed mustached macho man in a yellow Camaro, a Barbie-like woman in a hot pink car. Created from 1989 to 1991, Vector Portraits shows how intimately American self-identification is tied up with the automobile. He renders his drivers with a blend of voyeuristic fascination: quirkiness, comedy and sometimes even despair are all present, depending upon the attitude of the driver. The title for the series comes from the dual meaning of vector, as an agent that contains or carries and the physics concept of the distance between point A and point B. “Cars represent many things,” says Bush “style, fetish, and will always be an index of social status. If I see someone driving a Bugatti Veyron I am curious—I want to see who is driving that million-dollar car.” Bush’s work has shown alongside some of the most revered photographs of our age including Larry Sultan and Philip-Lorca diCorcia. His work is included in many prominent collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. His Vector Portraits were assembled in the 2008 Yale University Press book Drive. Graduating from Yale University with an MFA in Photography in 1982, he has been pursuing the Vector Portraits series since he moved to Los Angeles in 1989. His work has been exhibited extensively in solo and group shows, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College (Wellesley, Massachusetts) and Staatliche Kunsthalle (Baden-Baden, Germany). Bush’s work is held in prominent public collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The George Eastman House (Rochester, New York) and The Victoria & Albert Museum (London). The artist currently resides in Los Angeles.