About the Photographer/Author

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).

Since withdrawing from commercial photographic practice in 1993, Rutherford's photographic projects exploring the nature of the often ‘unanticipatable’ contribution of the medium in rendering The Things in Front of the Lens – and whether this constitutes an active (an act of?) collaboration in the creation of scenes, events and ‘moments’ which did not exist and could not have existed until brought into being by the act of photographing – have been exhibited in Canada, New Zealand, USA, France and Japan. (See photographic projects)

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; in 2014, Rutherford joined Bournemouth University as Programme Leader of MA Advertising.