Bruce Weber (born March 29, 1946) is an American fashion photographer and occasional filmmaker. He has made ad campaigns for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Pirelli, Abercrombie & Fitch, Revlon, and Gianni Versace, and made work for Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, Elle, Life, Interview, and Rolling Stone magazines.
Life and work
Weber was born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, to a Jewish family. His fashion photography first appeared in the late 1970s in GQ magazine, where he had frequent cover photos. Nan Bush, his longtime companion and agent, was able to secure a contract with Federated Department Stores to shoot the 1978 Bloomingdales mail catalog. He came to the attention of the general public in the late 1980s and early 1990s with his advertising images for Calvin Klein. He was first approached by Klein to work on an underwear campaign, and Weber took inspiration from Herbert List's shoot in Santorini. His straightforward black-and-white shots, featuring an unclothed woman and man on a swing facing each other, two clothed men in bed, and model Marcus Schenkenberg barely holding jeans in front of himself in a shower, catapulted them both into the national spotlight. His photograph for Calvin Klein of Olympic athlete Tom Hintnaus in white briefs is an iconic image. He photographed the winter 2006 Ralph Lauren Collection.
Some of Weber's other earliest fashion photography appeared in the SoHo Weekly News and featured a spread of men wearing only their underwear. The photos became the center of controversy and Weber was told by some that he would never find work as a fashion photographer again. This reputation stuck with him, as he says: "I don't really work editorially in a large number of magazines because a lot of magazines don't want my kind of photographs. It's too risky for them."
After doing photo shoots for and of famous people (many of whom were featured in Andy Warhol's Interview magazine), Weber made short films of teenage boxers (Broken Noses), his beloved pet dogs, and later, a longer film entitled Chop Suey. He directed Let's Get Lost, a 1988 documentary about jazz trumpeter Chet Baker.
Weber's photographs are occasionally in color; however, most are in black and white or toned shades. They are gathered in books, including A House is Not a Home as well as Bear Pond and Gentle Giants, two books of his photographs of his pet dogs.
Weber began collaborating with crooner Chris Isaak in the mid-1980s, photographing Isaak in 1986 for his second album, Chris Isaak. In 1988, Weber photographed a shirtless Isaak in bed for a fashion spread in Rolling Stone. Isaak appeared in Let's Get Lost and Weber has directed a music video for Isaak.
Weber photographed Harry Connick, Jr. for his 1991 album Blue Light, Red Light.
In 1993, Weber photographed singer-songwriter Jackson Browne for his 1993 album I'm Alive.
Filmmaking
Weber's cinematic works—including his four feature-length films—often begin with a photo sitting. While he was photographing the Olympic hopefuls for Interview Magazine in 1984, Weber met Andy Minsker, a young boxer from Oregon, and started interviewing him on camera. While he originally intended to make a short to accompany an exhibition he was opening in Paris, Weber became very excited when he reviewed the dailies and decided to continue the story. Broken Noses (1987), the resulting feature documentary, was nominated for the Grand Jury Award at Sundance in 1988.
As Weber was completing work on Broken Noses, he met the jazz trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker and began filming him, again with a mind to creating a short film based on their portrait sitting. But filming with Baker continued right through the presentation of Broken Noses in Cannes that year—with Weber ultimately assembling the footage of travel, recording sessions, and interviews into his second feature, Let's Get Lost (1988). The film debuted in Venice (where it won the Cinecritica award) and was subsequently nominated for a Grand Jury Award at Sundance, and for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.
Chop Suey, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the wrestler Peter Johnson, was released in 2001, and the impressionistic anti-war film A Letter to True in 2004. His work-in-progress Robert Mitchum feature, Nice Girls Don't Stay for Breakfast was screened at the New York Film Festival in 2017. He has also directed seven short films: Beauty Brothers, Parts I-IV (1987), Backyard Movie (1991), Gentle Giants (1994), The Teddy Boys of the Edwardian Drape Society (1995), Wine and Cupcakes (2007), The Boy Artist (2008), and Liberty City is Like Paris to Me (2009).