Rachelle Bussières

Existing at the intersection of photography, painting, and sculpture, my work investigates our broader human experience through light, perception, and time. Inspired by my early childhood memories spent in the wilderness of northeastern Québec, my anthropology background and an interest in my Indigenous Innus heritage, I create cameraless prints using symbols, forms, and hues drawing on astronomy, transcendentalism, and the sublime. I collect, fabricate, and compose reflective tools from bent metal and glass to create new photographic documents using the lumen print process. This process involves capturing exposures of natural and artificial light sources on gelatin silver paper; the resulting works oscillate between two-dimensional images and three-dimensional objects. Each piece becomes a record of the moment of its creation while connecting us to the position of the sun, and the universe, throughout the seasons and in relation to our location. Embracing the convergence of art and science, my practice integrates the sinuous movement and unpredictable contours of light, where the sublime is found “in a formless object insofar as limitlessness is represented in it,” to refer to German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s concept. Curvilinear waves glance off elliptical arcs, creating forms that reference both the otherworldly and the corporeal – astral movements, organic landscape forms, and transcendent symbols. The color palette, compositions, and time exposures emerge from an intuitive desire to break away from photography’s prevailing masculine characteristics: technicality, distance, and control. Challenging our ability to comprehend and expressing our desire to find meaning in the unknown, my work is simultaneously personal and universal, connecting the ever-changing state of light and time with the fluctuations of the natural world.

Rachelle Bussieres was born and raised in Québec City, Canada. She received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2015. She approaches the darkroom as a sculptor, layering and manipulating photographic materials to investigate our broader human experience through light, perception, and time. Bussieres’ recent solo exhibitions include Galerie Alexandre Motulski-Falardeau (Québec, Canada), Melanie Flood Projects (Portland, Oregon), Penumbra Foundation (New York, New York, USA), Johansson Projects (Oakland, California) and Robert Koch Gallery (San Francisco, California). She is the recipient of a Canada Council for the Arts Grant in the Research and Creation category, received an honorable mention for the Snider Prize from the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and was a finalist for the Aperture Foundation Portfolio Prize. Some recent group shows include the International Center for Photography, the World Trade Center, and Rubber Factory (all New York, New York), Seattle Pacific University (Seattle, Washington), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Brooklyn, New York), Soil Gallery (Seattle, Washington), the General French Consulate (San Francisco, California), the Center for Fine Art Photography (Fort Collins, Colorado), Galerie l’Inlassable (Paris, France), Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito, California) and Present Company (Brooklyn, New York). She was an artist-in-residence at Brooklyn Darkroom, Silver Art Projects, Penumbra Foundation, Banff Center, Sim, Vermont Studio Center, and Headlands Center for the Arts. Her work is part of various public, corporate, and private collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago, Illinois), the Four Seasons Hotel, the Wing, SFMOMA’s Library and Archives, Facebook (Sunnyvale, California), Instagram Inc. (San Francisco, California), and Penumbra Foundation (New York, New York). Bussieres lives and works in New York City where she extends her practice as the founder of LUMIÈRE NYC, an educational organization that supports a long-term and comprehensive resource by bringing together the arts, science, and theories of early photography in the context of contemporary practices using lumen printing. 

CV

The Costal Post, “Rachelle Bussières visited by Kevin Umaña”, April 20, 2021, Kevin Umaña
“Bussières’s work draws upon various art forms to reshape how we perceive light and shadow as a sculpted form. Her environmentally generated works manage to capture the essence of time progressing and sets a mood in which the optical space is determined by our personal perception.” LINK

Eastbay Express, “Rachelle Bussières”, March 7, 2020, Dewitt Cheng
“…The images of Rachelle Bussières In Light, Conditions of Time appear on first glance to be immaculately painted abstractions of color and light, but are actually lumen-print photographs that abandon photography’s documentary function. Bussières somehow conjures color from black and white silver gelatin photo paper, creating in her layered photograms of various objects, luminous spaces with gliding circles and curves…” Link 

BOOOOOOOM, “Artist Spotlight: Rachelle Bussieres”, October 4, 2019, Jeff Hamada.
“A selection of work by artist Rachelle Bussières. Intersecting photography and sculpture — two-dimensional image and three-dimensional object — Bussières moves through a collision of materials, documents and assembled forms to explore the relationship between the physical world, time, and perception.” Link

Elysian, “Investing in Female Artists”, Summer 2019, Kate McQuaid
“Women artists—from old masters to those just out of art school—have slowly gained traction in museums and on the art market for years. If you’re thinking of collecting art by women, now is the time.” Link

Eastbay Express, “First Friday Guide, August Edition: Staff Pick”, Aug 3, 2018, Amyra Soriano
“Sennish and Bussières will be at Johansson Projects to showcase Concrete Utopia, an exhibit of industrial extremes and an unveiling of the artists’ truths in their everyday lives.” Link

Artillery Mag Online, “Lauren Marsolier, Rachelle Bussières”, September 2016, Cheng DeWitt. 
“Rachelle Bussières’ 14 abstract, medium-sized works in “Strata” combine a painterly approach to materials—inks, plastics and glass substrates, I am guessing—with silver-nitrate photography and solarization, to create subdued landscapes that are not quite landscapes, or are more than landscapes, in delicate grays and browns that recall the albumen prints of early 19th-century photography.” Link

Artforum Online, “Critics’ Picks San Francisco: Lauren Marsolier and Rachelle Bussières” July, 2016, Kim Beil
“The gallery also presents fourteen unique gelatin silver prints by San Francisco–based Rachelle Bussières. The chemical colors and hard edges recall Alison Rossiter’s cameraless experiments with expired photographic paper, but Bussières’s images begin with negatives. “Strata” refers to the geologic features that Bussières photographs and to the darkroom manipulations that give these images a collage-like feel.” Link

Minnesota Street Projects, “Works in progress/ Rachelle Bussières”, 2017. Brion Nuda Roscha. 
“Bussières approaches the darkroom as sculptor, cutting, layering and manipulating photographic materials. Forms and geologic features create images balancing estrangement and familiarity — no solutions are provided, rather an invitation to a dreamlike venture through unknown geography.” Link

 Juxtapoz, “Edge Effect: SFAI’s MFA Exhibition”, May 13, 2015.
“Rachelle Bussieres is a French-Canadian artist who whose experiments with darkroom photography incorporate painting and sculpture. Manipulating the chemical and printing components of the actual printing process, she arrives at thought provoking scenarios and considers the boundaries of human perceptions. But her time at SFAI was never questioned, especially the “thoughtful professors who made me discover who I was am what was important for me.” Link

Magenta, Flash Forward 2016, Honorable Mention, 2017. Link

Big Bad Bettie Press, Rabbit Rabbit: Contributing artist, 2017. Link

Ryall Contemporary, “Rachelle Bussières”, May 27, 2018. Link

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