Biography
Bruce Weber is a US-American photographer and film producer. He is internationally known for his advertising campaigns for Calvin Klein, the fashion company Abercrombie & Fitch and Ralph Lauren, and for his work for the magazines GQ and Rolling Stone. Weber was born in Greensburg as the son of a photographer. He probably first studied at Princeton, later he switched to Lisette Model at the New School for Social Research through Diane Arbus.
He is mainly active in the field of fashion photography; his work was first published in the late 1970s, initially in GQ magazine. In the 1980s, he became increasingly well known internationally as a photographer and gained international recognition, particularly through his fashion campaigns for Calvin Klein. Well-known photographs are black-and-white photos of an undressed heterosexual couple looking at each other on a swing, two dressed men in bed and model Marcus Schenkenberg holding his jeans naked in a shower. Weber has worked for Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie & Fitch, Volvo, Karl Lagerfeld, Versace and Dior Homme, among others. Characteristic of his work as a fashion photographer is the explosion of the genre. In Weber’s photographs, the focus is on people, not so much on clothing. Accordingly, Weber is very careful in his choice of models. Many top models – especially male ones – owe their discovery to Bruce Weber. The somewhat nostalgic style of the “boy next door” was introduced into fashion photography by him. In 1998 and 2003 he designed the Pirelli calendar.
Weber was also active as a film director. He made a short film Broken Noses with young boxers2 , a two-hour documentary Let’s Get Lost about the jazz trumpeter Chet Baker who was on the 2008 Cannes Film Festival’s classic programme, a short film about his pet dogs, and a black-and-white film Chop Suey about his own observations of everyday life.3 His anti-war film A Letter to True was the opening film of the 2004 Berlinale, which wrote the following in its press release.
“In his film essay A Letter to True, US star photographer Bruce Weber creates a world full of longing and gratitude – a homage to a better life that his dogs remind him of. His dogs Lassie and Rintintin … (narrators Julie Christie and Marianne Faithfull) take the viewer on a journey – the letter to favourite dog True is spoken by Bruce Weber.”
For the music group Pet Shop Boys he made the videos for the singles Being boring (1990), Se a vida é (1996) and I get along (2002). In 2004 Weber made a flying visit to fashion design. He designed his own collection, but it was not followed by another. The articles of the Casual Men’s Wear under the Weberbilt label are still sold in only three shops worldwide, in London, Miami and Tokyo. Weber is married to Nan Bush, with whom he also works sometimes. His work is represented, for example, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Centre Pompidou.
