Bruce Weber (photographer)

Bruce Weber (born March 29, 1946) is an American fashion photographer and film director known for his work with fashion brands and magazines.

Weber has directed several films, including Let's Get Lost (1988), a documentary about jazz musician Chet Baker, and Chop Suey (2001), a portrait of a wrestler. Let's Get Lost received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature and a Cinecritica Award at the Venice Film Festival. Weber is also the founder and co-owner of Little Bear Press, which publishes books and the independent arts magazine All-American.[1]

Weber has been accused of sexual assault by more than 20 models, and has been the subject of three lawsuits,[2] all of which have reached settlements. He currently resides in Miami and is married to, who is also his agent.

Life and work

Weber was born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, to a Jewish family.[3] 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.[4] 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 suggestively holding jeans in front of himself in a shower, catapulted them both into the national spotlight.[5][6] His photograph for Calvin Klein of Olympic athlete Tom Hintnaus in white briefs is an iconic image.[7][8] He photographed the winter 2006 Ralph Lauren Collection.

Some of Weber's earliest fashion photography appeared in the SoHo Weekly News and featured a spread of men wearing only 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."[9][4][10]

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),[11][12] his beloved pet dogs, and later, a longer film entitled Chop Suey.[13][14] He directed Let's Get Lost, a 1988 documentary about jazz trumpeter Chet Baker.[15][16]

Weber's photographs are occasionally in color; however, most are in black and white or shades of a tone.[11] They appear in compilations in books including A House is Not a Home,[17] as well as Bear Pond and Gentle Giants. The latter two are books of his photographs of his pet dogs.[18]

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.[19] 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.

His ad campaigns include projects for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren,[20] Pirelli,[21] Abercrombie & Fitch, Revlon, Miu Miu,[22] Armani,[23] Louis Vuitton[24] and Gianni Versace. His editorial work has appeared in Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, Elle, Life, Interview, and Rolling Stones magazines.

Filmmaking

Weber's cinematic works—including his five feature-length films—often begin with a photo sitting. "All my films begin from finding someone I want to take a photograph of,"[25] Weber told the Sunday Times of London in 2008.

Broken Noses (1987)

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.[26][27]

Let's Get Lost (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.[27] 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.[27] Filming took a year with Weber approaching it, as he told The Times of London, "like his (Baker's) interpretation of a song, open-ended, not lyrical or strict."[28] The film features clips of Baker "in his prime in the 1950s...combined with his drug-damaged incarnation in the film's present day: gaunt and spaced out but still striking." Baker, Weber said, "was like a geyser in a national park. Exploding up and raining and raining back down, falling apart on everyone."[28]

Chop Suey (2001)

Chop Suey, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the wrestler Peter Johnson, was released in 2001.[29] The Sunday Times of London reviewed it as "an aesthetic autobiography, in which he ruminates on some of his heroes and inspirations."[30] According to a New York Times review at the time the film "moves easily between video and film and between black-and-white and color as Mr. Weber explores the world around him, a world that he finds full of beauty and erotic possibility. One of his most engaging discoveries is the 91-year-old Sir Wilfred, who as a young desert explorer made photographs of Bedouin tribesman that prefigure Mr. Weber's own work."[31]

A Letter to True (2004)

Weber released the impressionistic anti-war film A Letter to True in 2004, in the aftermath of 9/11, and addressed to one of Weber's beloved golden retrievers."[32][33] The film is an 'audiovisual scrapbook'[34] In a review of the film The Sunday Times of London details how Weber rhapsodises over some of his favourite people, memories and ideas. (He) is a shameless old softie for whom dogs are emblematic of a happy home, (and)‘cherishes domestic security amid the fear created by the…attacks."[35]

The Treasure of His Youth (2022)

Weber's fifth feature-length film focuses on the prominent Italian photojournalist Paolo Di Paolo, who was 94 when Weber began shooting the documentary.[36][37]

Short films

His work-in-progress Robert Mitchum feature, Nice Girls Don't Stay for Breakfast was screened at the New York Film Festival in 2017.[38] 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).[27]

Sexual assault allegations

In December 2017, model Jason Boyce sued Weber in New York State Supreme Court, claiming sexual assault, including inappropriate touching and kissing during a 2014 casting session.[39][40] The suit also targets Jason Kanner of Soul Artist Management, which managed Boyce when the alleged assault took place, and Little Bear Inc., the production company operated by Weber's companion, Nan Bush.[41] A second model, Mark Ricketson, came forward in December 2017 alleging similar claims and joined Boyce's lawsuit against Weber.[42]

Weber has denied the allegations,[43] stating to The New York Times that the allegations were "untrue" and that he had "never touched anyone inappropriately".[44]

In January 2018, The New York Times detailed sexual assault allegations by 15 male models against Weber.[2]

In January 2019, it was reported that Weber asked to dismiss the original suit by Jason Boyce, with evidence provided that the model sent him racy photos and texts prior to and after the shoots.[45]

By 2020, the Plaintiffs' cases against Weber began to face apparent setbacks, and in June 2020, Lisa Bloom, a high-powered harassment claims lawyer representing Weber's accusers in various suits, was ordered to pay Weber $28,000 in legal costs after Boyce refused to answer certain questions at a deposition.[46]

By September 2021, the 3 cases against Weber were each either dismissed or settled for undisclosed sums.[47]

On 3 April 2024, The Hollywood Reporter published an interview on Alan Ritchson wherein the Reacher star comments on prior allegations against Weber and Mario Testino reported by The New York Times:[48] "Some of the stories were just like mine. I was just starting to build a platform and get my voice in the business, and I wondered, ‘Should I say something?’ Because all of the stories that those models were telling were my own. It’s all true."

Personal life

Weber is married to Nan Bush[49] who is also his agent and one of his collaborators.[50]

In a 2002 interview he said, "I've had a lot of great romances. Men and women, I mean I feel like I can fall in love almost every day. I feel sorry for people who don't feel that."[50]

He has lived in Miami since 1998.[51][52]

Films

Bibliography

External links