Born in New Orleans, Jay Rusovich is a contemporary fine art and portrait photographer and published author. He received his degrees from Tulane University and Exeter College, Oxford. After a decades long career as a freelance commercial photographer and writer representing a diverse range of clients including Saachi & Saachi, Harper Collins Publishing, Sony Entertainment, Universal Pictures, EAS Corporation, Continental Airlines, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation and many more, he turned his attention to fine art. Soon, he began participating in countless exhibitions throughout the United States, both group and solo. He has lived and worked in London, New York City and Los Angeles, and currently resides in Houston, Texas.
“My career started in the days of film before everyone with a cell phone was a photographer. In those days photography was a highly respected field, and just a few handful of shooters in the major metro areas were doing all of the work. No wonder we were paid so well. I travelled the world with assistants, working on a freelance basis for the widest spectrum of clients. One day it was an energy company, the next a bank. It didn’t matter. My job was to shoot on a dime and that’s what I did. Rarely was there any advance planning. I had to hit the ground running. We all got used to that. It’s how I learned. How we all learned. On my very first assignment I winged it and somehow got paid. That was my ticket forward. My validation. To this day I have never taken a single class in photography. In those days, the field was physically taxing, like manual labor, really. I’d be shooting while someone was loading film backs. That was the main reason for assistants in the field. To load backs. Polaroid test sheets would litter the floors wherever we happened to be, and chemicals were all over the place. It was messy business. And if the client needed aerials, I had to get in a chopper with a gyroscope, and, as usual, one or two assistants. There were no drones to do all of this for us. If it was a jungle, same thing, choppers and assistants crammed into these treacherous machines, some of which looked like they were far older that I was at the time. Photographers were expected to know what they were doing no matter what was asked, so like veterans of foreign wars, we learned or died trying. And speaking of dying, there were the hot zones around the world that carried State Department travel warnings. Most of the time we were flown in private jets that landed in the dead of the night, as we were taken to secure zones by French Foreign Legion soldiers carrying automatic weapons. People these days can’t fathom all of this because there is very little of it left. My industry changed radically with the advances in technology, so as digital innovations marched forward at stunning velocity, our day rates fell. I could elaborate here, but you can follow this to its logical conclusion. To wrap things up in this business, I signed some large publishing contracts and shot fitness magazines, movie posters and books until retiring from commercial work altogether in 2005. At this point forward I focused on fine art and book writing. To this day nothing has changed I’m quite happy to report.”
Rusovich exhibits throughout Texas, as well as Art Basel in Miami Beach. Most recently, Mr. Rusovich was among a select few photographers chosen by a panel of international curators and art critics to appear in Erotic Signature’s latest compendium,  “The World’s Greatest Erotic Art of Today,” volume 6, published in 2015. He is also a regular participant in the international recognized Dallas and Houston Art Fairs.
One of the works chosen, “The Garden,” appears in his first book of photographs titled, “InsideOut” which is sold at select bookstores around the world and on Amazon. He also published a satiric literary memoir titled, “Urban Dystrophy,” and hosts a blog of the same name: www.urbandystrophy.com.
He is represented by Deborah Colton Gallery in Houston and Dallas.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2014 Jay Rusovich – Solo Exhibition, Kirk Hopper Gallery, Dallas, Texas, United States
2013 Jay Rusovich – Solo, Jay Rusovich & Carolyn Farb, Jay Rusovich in Conjunction with
Dominic Walsh Dance Theater, Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, Texas, United States
GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS AND ONE MAN HANGING, Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, Texas, United States
2012 Unleashed, FotoFest 2012 Biennale, Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, Texas, United States
IKONIC, Samuel Lynne Galleries, Dallas, Texas, United States
Transformations 2012!, Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, Texas, United States
2011 IKONIC, Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, Texas, United States
2010 Beautiful, Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, Texas, United States
2009 InsideOut Part III and Book Launch, Colton & Farb Gallery - Deborah
Colto Houston Fine Art Fair, Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, Texas
The Dallas Art Fair, Colton & Farb Gallery - Deborah Colton Gallery, Dallas, Texas, United States
2010 The Dallas Art Fair, Colton & Farb Gallery - Deborah Colton Gallery, Dallas, Texas, United States
Selected Bibliography
2014n Gallery, Houston, Texas, United States
2005 InsideOut Part II Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, Texas, United States
InsideOut Part I, Bering & James Gallery, Tremont Tower Penthouse,
Houston, Texas, United States
Selected Group Exhibitions
2009 FotoFest, New Gallery, Houston, Texas
Art Fairs
2013 The Dallas Art Fair, - Deborah Colton Gallery, Dallas, Texas, United States
2012 The Dallas Art Fair, - Deborah Colton Gallery, Dallas, Texas, United States
On fine art…
"My work explores gender stereotypes and how we judge one another based upon appearance and gender, without regard to the oftentimes-complex inner landscape that drives us. It's because of this that I celebrate what some consider to be "sacrilege," the "immoral" the "perverse" the "unconscionable," and the "lost." These labels are all subjective, but pervasive in a world grounded in order and symmetry. My exhibitions often involve multiple works that complete a single narrative."
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