While photography for photography's sake comprises a relatively small part of Robert Rauschenberg's enormous and varied artistic output, a great deal of what he does, and has done, is in some part photographic. And when Rauschenberg employs the photomechanical process, it is usually in the form of a photo-transfer. In fact, this has become a signature of sorts for him, in much the same way silkscreen was for Andy Warhol.

A number of the covers which use Rauschenberg's work may be found on textbooks, primarily those which deal in some way with the period in America between, say, 1945 and 1970. It is as if any subject or event mentioned in the books text can be located within the myriad of mediated images in Rauschenberg's collage. KB

Covering Photography is a web-based archive and resource for the study of the relationship between the history of photography and book cover design. Read more about the project.