In addition to his street portraits, Bruce Wrighton also tried to capture environments. Not because he wanted to be close to his subjects, but to show that he felt for others, that it wasn’t just a body experience. Cars, household interiors or advertisements were treated with the same meticulous attention as the anonymous. Flamboyant colors, precise framing, geometric aesthetics. Brighton is not an amateur, he studied photography at Rochester University. He worked with a 20 × 25 view camera, which gave him time to take all angles of the bi-chrome Buick gracefully parked like a sculpture in front of Mickey’s Blue Haven. He had a thing for cars, liked to transform them into works of art. He showed how profane daily objects could be made sacred (juke-box/Christ) and how bar decorations could make us think. He had this way of making a workshop beautiful, a throw of the dice. Fate was not fundamental for my American cousin, an interior man, capable of transforming a coat hanger into a flag, waiting for a gust of wind.
Brigitte Ollier
It is still possible to see pictures by Bruce Wrighton at the Douches Gallery in Paris.
And on Laurence Miller’s website, in preparations for an exhibition this spring.
