Wish You Were Here Documentary

Robert C. Bishop

“Wish You Were Here” is a short documentary film about Robert C. Bishop, who spent more than 60 years photographing landscapes throughout the West for commercial use.

Bishop, one of the preeminent western landscape photographers in the United States, marketed a majority of his work as color postcards. He began photographing landscape views of Colorado in the late 1950s, which were sold in resort towns and ski areas.  His early work  included the Four Corners Region.

He began his photography career after serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II. One of his early achievements was photographing the first photography conference in the United States in 1951 at the Hotel Jerome in Aspen. His interest in photography led him to study art at Stanford University and take workshops from Ansel Adams and Minor White in the 1950s.

Bishop started his postcard business in Denver, but relocated to Grand Junction in 1969. This move allowed him to be closer to the resorts and ski areas he photographed the most. Aspen was his flagship location.
After winning a number of photography awards and selling hundreds of thousands of postcards, he retired in 2005.

Eric Paddock, curator of photography at the Denver Art Museum, appears in the film along with Avery Glassman, programs and exhibitions curator at the Western Colorado Center for the Arts in Grand Junction as well as Bishop and his friend Allen Cox. (17 minutes 27 seconds, 2016)

Jack Lucido is a documentary filmmaker and communications professor at Western State Colorado University in Gunnison. Mark Johnstone is a photographer and photo historian based in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho, who researched and worked with Bob and the Bishop family for five years.


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