When the Indiana State Museum opens its new exhibit “Indy: A to Z” on Feb. 28, visitors browsing the letter F (for “Flats,” as in flat tires) will find four photographs by Chris Bucher that stop them in their tracks.
In one, Bucher posed a tiny X-Wing fighter diving into a long trench of cracked asphalt like it’s making the Death Star run. In another, he set a canoe on the edge of a watery pothole, poised to embark on a wilderness expedition. A Jeep teeters on the ridge of a crater with Lucas Oil Stadium in the background, as if the stadium were El Capitan and the driver a daring mountaineer.
The photos are funny, a little absurd and a tough-love letter to the city Bucher adored.
Bucher was one of Indiana’s most respected photographers and a fixture in the IndyCar paddocks for the last decade. He died of cancer in September 2025 at age 56. The exhibit is just the latest of many ways Bucher’s legacy lives on in Indianapolis.
His talent, magnetism and genuine love of life come into focus through his photos.
“He saw fun and beauty and whimsy and a story to tell in everybody and in every moment and in every adventure,” said Charlie Kimball, one of several IndyCar drivers who counted Bucher among his closest friends.
The background photo on Kimball’s phone is a portrait Bucher took of Kimball’s wife and daughter on a fall day in Indianapolis. Bucher dropped to one knee and caught the candid moment before anyone even knew what was happening.
‘Thank God I’m me’
Bucher came to photography the long way. He grew up in Carmel with his younger brother Josh and attended Indiana University in Bloomington. He spent his early 20s working at Roberts Camera in Indianapolis, learning the craft and dreaming of doing it for real.
Then, at age 25, he suffered a stroke and an aneurysm that changed everything.
“Since then, he has had this little saying: ‘Thank God I’m me,’” said his wife, Jenn. “I think he just realized how precarious life can be. So that was when he decided to become a photographer. He just jumped in.”
With a small loan from his Aunt Betty to cover a couple months of expenses, he became a photo assistant and never looked back.
Bill Simmons, a college friend who knew Bucher for nearly four decades, saw the transformation up close.
“I have always felt, since that aneurysm in his 20s, that he knew life was a very fleeting thing, and you best get on with it,” Simmons said.
Bucher used to mail friends postcards with photographs from his many world travels, hand-mounted on card stock. The sign-off was always the same: ‘Thank God I’m me.’ Not an expression of ego, Simmons is careful to note, but of genuine gratitude, as in, “Thank God I’ve had these life experiences that brought me to this moment.”
An eye for exploration
Buch, as his friends call him, had a way with people. He genuinely loved getting to know new faces, and it helped put his subjects at ease. He photographed for the Indiana Supreme Court. He shot portraits of WNBA legend Tamika Catchings — just cold-called her and asked if he could photograph her with her Olympic gold medals. The two became lasting friends.
He worked with Indy-based Klipsch Audio when the speaker company sponsored the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which meant going to induction ceremonies and shooting some of the biggest names in music.
He traveled the world shooting for a boutique travel company he’d encouraged a friend to start. He photographed the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii for the Purdue Alumni Association and wrote the story to go with it. He also authored two photography books. He went to the Philippines, Greece, Sardinia, Umbria and Paris.
Through it all, he and Jenn explored Indianapolis with the same enthusiasm. In 2015, they relocated downtown to the Holy Cross neighborhood, and Bucher fell in love with the city all over again — potholes and all. He and Jenn hit the breweries, attended the Fringe Festival, roamed the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, sampled the food scene.
“He just kind of fell in love with photography again when he moved back downtown,” Jenn said. “All of a sudden, he was meeting people of all different ages and all these really interesting jobs. I think that re-energized him so much.”
On the fast track
About a decade ago, Bucher made a move that surprised even his wife: He decided to become a racing photographer.
Buch loved cars. He drove a 1967 Pontiac Le Mans, then a Porsche convertible he’d drive to the track during the month of May with his friend and colleague Zach Hudson in the passenger seat. Windows down, two minutes of pure joy.
But breaking into the IndyCar circuit wasn’t easy. His first attempts didn’t pan out, and Jenn remembers him feeling genuinely discouraged.
He got his break through a public relations contact who knew IndyCar driver Simon Pagenaud. Pagenaud, the 2019 Indianapolis 500 champion, came to regard Bucher as something rare in the paddock: a photographer who understood him deeply enough to match the photo to the moment.
“When I felt confident, he would make sure the pictures would show that trait in my eyes under the helmet,” Pagenaud said. “When I was happy, he would make sure to grab a shot with one of my mechanics while joking around. Or when I was upset or frustrated, it would be a photo with sparks flying from the bottom of the car.”
Pagenaud also remembered the last time he saw Bucher, last May at the race track. Bucher knocked on the door of his motorhome. Pagenaud had a meeting scheduled. He skipped it.
Bucher eventually joined forces with photographer Zach Hudson, and together they built a photo team that was hired by Chip Ganassi Racing, one of the sport’s elite organizations. Bucher shot Kimball’s races and photographed Marcus Ericsson’s Indy 500 victory in 2022.
He became a fixture in the media center and a ready mentor to young photographers. He was a guy who knew everyone, from the most famous drivers to the crew guys and the track workers.
“I would say he was easily one of the best photographers in Indianapolis, if not the best,” Hudson said. “He might have gone a little under the radar, but if you think of who he was able to work with and what he was able to do, yeah, top of the field.”
A heart for people
Every person who knew Buch tells some version of the same story: He made you feel like you were the most interesting person in the room.
He remembered everyone’s birthday. He noticed that a friend got a haircut when her own husband didn’t. He kept a mental calendar of people’s hard days — when a divorce was being finalized, when a career was in crisis — and showed up for them before they had to ask.
“He had a knack for tuning in,” Simmons said.
The celebration of Bucher’s life in November overflowed with 300 people telling stories. One of his college friends stood up and said something that everyone in the room recognized as true: A lot of people there would have considered Chris Bucher their best friend.
“He was that for me,” Hudson said. “He was one of my best friends. And there were so many people in that room that felt the same way.”
He mentored younger photographers without a trace of competitive anxiety. In an industry where photographers eat what they kill, freelance against each other and guard their contacts, Bucher would walk up to a young kid trying to break in and just start talking. He’d share tips, make introductions, help them figure it out.
“He just had the confidence of someone who knew that the world needs more than one great photographer,” said Simmons.
“He could make friends with anyone,” Pagenaud said. “Nobody could ever say no to him.”
For the love of life
The pothole photos started around 2018, born out of Bucher’s daily walks with his dog George. They kept stepping around the same asphalt craters that everyone else just tried to forget.
He wanted to recreate the famous blurry Loch Ness Monster photo, but in a pothole. That was the first one. Then it turned into: what else can I do with these? He raided his nephew’s toy collection. He stuffed a toy shark with rocks so it would sink to the bottom of a puddle without floating. He darted around downtown traffic, George on the leash on the sidewalk, while he set up his tiny vignettes.
He posted the photos on Instagram and the response was immediate. People loved them. When he posted photos of particularly bad potholes, city crews sometimes showed up to fill them within days. The Indianapolis Star put him on the cover.
“It was his way of telling truth to power,” Simmons said, “in the most charming, graceful, tongue-in-cheek way possible. He was using his art not just as creative expression but to draw attention to something we might just deal with.”
Brian Mancuso, the curator who selected Bucher’s work for the “Indy: A to Z” exhibit, said the photos captured exactly the spirit the museum was going for.
“There’s a playful acceptance to them,” he said. “I got a sense of him grabbing these toys and heading out there and saying, ‘We have to deal with this, but here’s a fun way to look at it.’”
The series also captured something essential about Bucher himself. He saw Indianapolis clearly — its potholes and its beauty, its frustrations and its warmth — and loved it anyway. He didn’t have to live downtown. He chose to. He didn’t have to fall in love with a mid-sized Midwest city that still sometimes struggled to know what it was. He just did.
When Bucher got sick, he kept going. He was still making plans, still showing up. Josh Bucher, his younger brother, got married at the end of 2024 and asked Chris to be his best man. Chris was already ill, but he went to the bachelor party in Chicago anyway. He figured out the medications, planned around the treatment schedule, and at the end of a long day stood up and gave a speech.
“The reason it stands out to me as kind,” Josh said, “is that he wanted to. I could feel it from him. It wasn’t like a burden, it wasn’t a drag.”
On a ski trip a few months after Bucher’s death, Kimball found himself standing outside past sunset, when everyone else had turned back toward the warmth and the cocktails. He was watching what he described as an ethereal quality of light that was more subtle than a typical sunset. He stood there and took the photo.
“Because Chris would have taken this picture,” Kimball said.
Mirror Indy, a nonprofit newsroom, is funded through grants and donations from individuals, foundations and organizations.
Megan Fernandez is a Mirror Indy freelance contributor. You can reach her at mbfernandez234@gmail.com.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
