Works on paper and photographs constitute some of Rauschenberg’s most significant early works: his series of collages on Italian shirt boards (1952–53); photographs taken in Europe and North Africa during his travels with the artist Cy Twombly in 1952–53; and various types of monoprints, including the cyanotypes (ca. 1949–1951) he made with his wife at the time, the artist Susan Weil, and Automobile Tire Print, which he made with the assistance of John Cage in 1953. It was not until the late 1950s and early 1960s, however, that the found image became paramount in Rauschenberg’s visual vocabulary. Reproductions from newspapers and magazines were incorporated into his drawings and prints as he perfected techniques of solvent transfer and lithography. In his transfer drawings (largely produced simultaneously with the later Combines), found images could now be smoothly continuous with the picture surface, where he mixed them with freely drawn and painted areas. 

By 1962, Rauschenberg was exploring the transfer technique in prints. That year, he made his first lithograph at Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) in West Islip, New York, and in 1963, he won the grand prize at the prestigious 5th International Exhibition of Graphic Art in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia. Printmaking remained central to Rauschenberg’s art-making practice thanks to the medium’s inherent reproducibility and the wide range of effects it enabled him to achieve. 

Rauschenberg’s early interest in photography was renewed in 1979 with his first collaboration with the Trisha Brown Dance Company. His set design for Glacial Decoy (1979) consisted of projections of his own black-and-white photographs. Several photography projects followed, including In + Out City Limits (1979–81) and the Photem Series (1981); both reveal Rauschenberg’s preference for common, street-level subjects. From 1983 until he could no longer hold a camera after suffering a stroke in 2002, the photographic images incorporated into Rauschenberg’s work in all media were drawn from his own photographs.