Rutherford's work explores the capacity of photographs to document scenes that did not exist in the world 'out there', but were created by the act of photographing them. Rutherford's photographic projects have been exhibited in Canada, New Zealand, USA, UK, France and Japan.
An editorial/illustrative photographer in Toronto, Canada from 1982-1993, Rutherford made photographs for advertising and public relations campaigns and designed communications and public education materials for corporate clients, government agencies and environmental and social justice groups. From 1993-1997, Rutherford served as the director of communications for two Canadian non-profit organisations (an environmental energy group and a national public interest group dealing with domestic violence).
Committed to raising public awareness of the power of visual communication (what Wittgenstein called ‘graphic propositions‘) to shape our social narratives, Rutherford's essays on photography, education and the ways in which advertising and corporate speech influence our ‘mental pictures‘ of products, politics and The Right Priorities have appeared in academic journals, newspapers and magazines.
From 1985 to 1994, Rutherford taught photographic arts in Toronto, Canada, at Humber College Institute of Technology and Ryerson University (and, during a sabbatical year 1987-88, in a private art school in Auckland, New Zealand). Following a move to southeast France, from 1999-2005, Rutherford was Senior Lecturer in Communication and Culture at EAI Tech / CERAM in Sophia Antipolis. From 2005 to 2014, Rutherford served as Programme Leader of BA Advertising at the University of Chester; from 2014 -2024, Rutherford was Programme Leader of MA Advertising at Bournemouth University where he redesigned the programme to prepare graduates to make a difference in the world by assisting brands in addressing our urgent social and environmental challenges. In 2024, Rutherford was awarded a PhD for his reserach into the use of intuitively made photographs as a means of establishing a dialogue with our creative unconscious.
Rutherford has now retired from academia to write and make photographs from Nice.
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