Christy Bush (b. 1970) is an Athens, Georgia-based photographer whose intimate portraiture captures three decades of fashion, celebrity, and fine art photography with distinctive Southern sensibility. Bush's artistic foundation was established as a teenager in Atlanta's punk rock scene and during her studies at the University of Georgia in the early 1990s, where she documented Athens' legendary music and creative community. After earning her BFA in photography from UGA's Lamar Dodd School of Art in 1993, she spent fifteen transformative years in New York City, building a prestigious client roster including Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, W, Interview, and brands like J.Crew.
Bush's signature approach employs direct, unflinching portraiture that transforms personal relationships into compelling visual narratives. The American South serves as both physical backdrop and spiritual wellspring for her work, where she photographs members of her family and the people she has created a life with, local personalities, and celebrities with equal intimacy. Her methodology bridges personal connection with theatrical presentation—what R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe characterizes as having an "invitational quality that simultaneously reveals raw vulnerability and glamorous artifice."
What distinguishes Bush's practice is her commitment to returning to the same subjects, locations, and themes across multiple years. This longitudinal approach reveals how time operates as both gentle current and invisible force, marking her subjects in ways simultaneously profound and barely perceptible.