In + Out City Limits (1979–81)

After a decades-long hiatus from a regular engagement with photography, Rauschenberg’s collaboration on friend and choreographer Trisha Brown’s Glacial Decoy in 1979 found him once again behind the camera. His ambition as a student at Black Mountain College, North Carolina in the early 1950s to photograph the United States “inch by inch” re-emerged and evolved into the In + Out City Limits project. The pictures he took in Fort Myers, Florida for the Glacial Decoy set comprised the first part of his new endeavor. He ultimately photographed in five additional cities: Baltimore; Boston; Charleston, South Carolina; Los Angeles; and New York. His own photography remained central to his artistic activity through the rest of his life, whether he was making discrete prints or capturing source imagery for his other artworks.