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Oscar Bailey | American, 1925 - 2010

Oscar Bailey earned a Bachelor of Arts from Wilmington College in Ohio in 1951, and in 1958, graduated from the Master of Fine Arts program at Ohio State University with a degree in photography. After graduation he began teaching at the University of Buffalo, New York, where he taught from 1958-1969.  During this time he became a founding member of the Society for Photographic Education (1962), working to develop new directions in photographic education.  In 1969, Bailey left Buffalo to start the photography program at the University of South Florida, where he taught until his retirement in 1985. While at USF, Bailey became an active participant in the Graphicstudio program, contributing his photographic expertise to a number of projects, including those with James Rosenquist, Robert Rauchenberg and Ed Ruscha.

Solo exhibitions of his work have been organized by Indiana University (1960); Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Michigan (1963); Ohio Wesleyan University (1964); International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York (1964); University of Oregon, Eugene (1969); University of South Florida, Tampa (1972, 1974); University of Colorado, Boulder (1976); Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (1977); University of North Florida, Jacksonville (1978); and the Lynch Gallery, St. Petersburg, Florida (1981).

Bailey’s photographs were included in numerous exhibitions, including: Master Photographs from Photography in the Fine Arts (debuted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and traveled to numerous museum from 1959-67); Photographs for Collectors, Museum of Modern Art (1960); Four Directions in Photography: Minor White,  Oscar Bailey, Simpson Kalisher, and Charles Swedlund, Albright-Knox Gallery (1964); Found Objects: Oscar Bailey and Charles Swedlund, Upton Gallery, State University of Buffalo (1965); Reflections from the Third Day: Photographic Revelations of Plant Design, Hunt Library, Carnegie-Mellon University, (1978); Commitment To Vision, University of Oregon Museum of Art (1986); Wide-Eyed: Panoramic Photographs, Minneapolis Institute of Art (2011-2012).

Minor White selected Bailey’s work for inclusion in two issues of Aperture magazine, both in Aperture 7.1 (Spring 1959) and 8.2 (Summer 1960). 

His photographs are in the collections of the George Eastman Museum, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, National Gallery of Art, Asheville Art Museum, Walker Art Center, Library of Congress, and Burchfield Penny Art Center.