45 years after MFA, Diane Bush re-exhibits photographs, in "Main Street" at CEPA Gallery

What is one of your fondest memories from your time studying Art at UB? 

I met some amazing people at U.B. who I am still friends with, including local writer Alan Bigelow and photographer Alida Fish. Alida temporarily replaced Donald Blumberg, the professor who originally recruited me for the program. 

How has your MFA degree influenced your career development?

The Masters Degree I earned was crucial to my later career, as a full-time Program Coordinator at Villa Maria College for seven years where I taught photography and hired other teaching staff, etc., to my part time teaching position at the Community College of Southern Nevada, the moment I touched down in Las Vegas. Those positions and the rave reviews I received from students and superiors most likely helped me get hired as a Cultural Supervisor for Clark County where I led and supervised gallery exhibits and the County's Public Art Program, among other roles. 

Do you have any advice for young and emerging photographers?

Take learning your craft seriously. Take pictures of what you love. Personally, I found teaching very rewarding, and I miss it. Doing occasional workshops allows me the best of both worlds. 

Introduction by Bruce Jackson

Good street photography is a gift to the future. The work appears casual and simple; it is neither. The photographer must select from the infinitude of things going on, ever changing from second to second, the moment to click the shutter—a moment that will capture that unique instant in time, place and movement. 

These wonderful photos by Diane Bush, like all good street photography, do more: they are full of mystery. The woman in the winter coat in a bus shelter across the street from a wig store: who is she? Where is she going? What does she look like? The man in a suit jacket watching boxers in a ring, separated from them by a haze of smoke from his cigar (cigarettes don’t make that much smoke). We don’t see his face either: who is he? Why is he there? The man walking with his back to us, his shadow falling on a huge vertical piano keyboard: who is he? Where is he going? 

And then there are photos with no people but evidence of where they had been: the absurd face drawn on a store dummy modeling a winter coat and hood in a store window’ the carefully-arrayed eyeglass frames in an optometrist’s shop. Photographs like these are like potsherds from the past: perfectly literal and factual but each poses more questions than it answers. The longer you look, the more you see. 

The contents of these photos are of the past but what they depict is with us still: older men still tape the hands of young boxers; pool players still stand with their cues a little above horizontal, studying the shot, their hands and the table lighted by hanging lamps and maybe streetlight pouring in from windows across the room; short order cooks still turn hamburgers in fast food joints; and the light of Buffalo winter, out in the street or coming in the windows, is just the same. 

These photos are, finally, like poems. The images are there, perfectly wrought. What you make of them—that’s up to you.

Bruce Jackson

Buffalo

August 28, 2022

[Content below priginally published on the "Main Street by Diane Bush" CEPA Gallery webpage.]

Artist Statement: 

“This project, shot in 1981, was my last black and white documentary photographic essay, created for my M.F.A. degree (University of Buffalo) in Fine Arts Photography. The final project was exhibited at Artist’s Gallery (later Big Orbit) on Essex Street. Later, WNED-TV used the images to create a five minute filler with collected sound and jazz, using a Ken Burn’s style of panning, zooming, and fades. Since then, the work has been rarely seen, perhaps at the occasional CEPA art auction.  

My original intent was to document Downtown Buffalo during the “Revitalization” that had engulfed the Theatre District. Buffalo was the last Rust Belt city to take advantage of these Federal dollars. It was 1980, but it looked as if some businesses were still in the 40s and 50s. All this was rather romantic to my mind. Conditions were challenging, as I was not allowed to use flash, or additional lighting, and I did not have any digital tools then. I spent most of my time at Singer’s Boxing Gym, and Hippodrome Billiards. The only location I photographed that is still around is Shea’s Theatre. Singer’s Gym burned, and the Hippodrome moved to Hertel. The Police Station (originally an art deco Greyhound Bus station) is now the Alleyway Theatre.

Forty-five years later, these images preserve a slice of time in Buffalo history that perhaps no one was interested in acknowledging. I never saw anyone else recording the transition, so I took up the reins, hoping the value would some day resonate. ” – Diane Bush

Biography:

Diane Bush is an American activist artist and photographer, who trained in the U.K.  In her later years, Bush has embraced public art through public participation projects using fiber art (Yarn Bombing) and performance. “I think of myself as a problem solver that uses art (and humor) to get the job done.”

Born in Buffalo, Diane Bush emigrated to England at the age of 18 in response to the Vietnam War. She Returned ten years later and she earned her MFA from the University at Buffalo. After graduating, she spent seven years as staff photographer at the local affiliate of the National Public Broadcasting and ABC-TV stations. At the same time, she pursued self-imposed artistic projects and established a non-profit public arts organization, URBAN ART.

Bush was the Photography Department Coordinator at Villa Maria College, while earning recognition through entities such as CEPA, Hallwalls, Kodak, Polaroid, Nikon, Ilford, and the AKG Buffalo Art Museum. Bush’s work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe, including London’s Photographers Gallery, and the Houston Center for Photography. Her fine art resides in the collections of the Martin Parr Foundation, George Eastman House, Helmet Gernsheim Collection, and Burchfield Penney Art Center. Her paperback book(let), Main Street, Buffalo, New York 1980-1981, published by Café Royal Books, features a selection of works on view at CEPA from 5.1.26 to 7.17.26. High quality reproduction values, copies are currently in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Britain,  and The Victoria and Albert Museum.

Press

The Buffalo News did a feature on Diane Bush's 2026 "Main Street" exhibition at CEPA Gallery.

"Elizabeth Licata: When Downtwon Buffalo was as gritty as its gets, Diane Bush was ready for Main Streets' close-up", April 25, 2026. Archived here.

UB current students/faculty/staff can access the Buffalo News online  via the Newsbank database, here.