BRUCE WEBER
American
Bruce Weber has made considerable contributions
to the categories of portrait and fashion photo-
graphy. His signature black and white photographs
of young men and women are formally beautiful
works that have achieved widespread popularity
through their use in the campaigns of Calvin
Klein, Ralph Lauren, Gianni Versace, Abercrombie
and Fitch, and others. Weber also works in color
photography, and as a film and video director, for
which he has received numerous awards, including a
nomination from the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences.
Weber was born and raised in Pennsylvania. He
trained in photography and film at various institu-
tions in the New York City area. By the mid 1970s,
he was producing a great number of black and white
photographs of the nude male figure and portraits of
individuals in the music industry. He was influenced
by photographers Diane Arbus, whom he met on
several occasions, and Richard Avedon, for whom
he modeled. By the end of the 1970s he was exhibit-
ing his work in several major galleries.
Weber’s exhibitions led to the interest of Calvin
Klein, in the mid to late 1980s, who employed him as
his primary photographer for his clothing and fra-
grance lines. The Calvin Klein advertisements that
Weber produced were some of the most sophisticated
advertisement photography but also highly contro-
versial. In an early set of images for Calvin Klein
underwear, Weber used his characteristic black and
white photography to show young males, in un-
derwear alone, standing in provocative poses. The
photographs were posted at widely visible venues
such as Times Square in New York City, resulting in
publicity for both Calvin Klein and Weber. Weber’s
photographs were celebrating the male form, not
unlike Michelangelo’s sculptures, but their release
coincided with the debate over the homoerotic pho-
tographs of Robert Mapplethorpe. As a result of this
timing, similar accusations were put upon Weber’s
work. Despite the controversy, Weber continued to
be selected by Klein for other advertisements for his
company, including a mid-1990s layout and television
commercial for the fragrance line Eternity.
Weber has also been sought after for his por-
traiture. Almost every major magazine, including
Vogue,Vanity Fair,andRolling Stone, has employed
him for editorials on eminent figures in fashion, film,
music, and the arts. Celebrities such as Aretha
Franklin, Robert De Niro, Georgia O’Keeffe, and
Brad Pitt, among many others, have commissioned
him for private sessions. The portraits are some of the
most intimate reflections of how seemingly untouch-
able figures appear inside their own homes or within
natural settings.
Formally, Weber prefers the use of black and
white film and natural light. The result is subtly
shaded human forms. The look compares to that of
portraits by fellow fashion photographer Irving
Penn, but with a much greater degree of realism.
Bruce Davidson’s straightforward shots of anon-
ymous people are perhaps the closest parallel to
Weber’s portraits, except that Weber’s subjects
are rarely posing. Weber gives his subjects a sort
of ultimate freedom of movement and then catches
them, famous and anonymous, in action. He pre-
fers natural settings, or location shoots, that show
the subjects outdoors. He also likes to show sub-
jects in groups, typically many young people, gath-
ered and involved in recreation.
Weber’s work has a casual unplanned realism but
is also technically acute with formally advanced
compositions and focus that allows the entire
scene to be in clear view. Occasionally, cropping
occurs when a group of subjects may be too large
to fit into a single frame. In these instances, Weber
frequently focuses in on an exchange between two
of the subjects. He creates the sense that his subjects
are intimately involved, even though they may be
virtual strangers. In this way, Weber successfully
fictionalizes scenes with anonymous models, advan-
cing the great fantasy of fashion photography.
Perhaps one of the reasons that Weber’s pho-
tography was such a critical component to late
twentieth century fashion advertisements was his
use of intimate lifestyle-like settings that coordi-
nated with the increase in lifestyle marketing.
Weber does not show only clothes or underwear
in his photographs. He shows the individuals wear-
ing the clothes and underwear in glamorous, fun,
social, and intimate activities, ultimately selling the
idea that a certain brand of clothes is the key to an
ideal lifestyle. This is particularly the case in his
work for Abercrombie and Fitch. For this outdoorWEBER, BRUCE