To gain a better understanding of Bruce Weber and his photography, it is worth browsing through the nearly six hundred pages of the volume Bruce Weber. My Education, recently published by Taschen.
Alongside his most well-known images, others are less familiar and previously unpublished. Not to mention the anecdotes narrated by the photographer himself, which provide insight into the context in which the images were taken and offer clues about the people in them.
During the presentation, we leafed through the book in the rooms on the first floor of the Taschen Milan Store, which overlooks one of the city’s most attractive streets. Turning towards the indoors, the gaze lingered on Bruce Weber’s photographs (and the world he portrayed), displayed here in the exhibition More is Never Enough. Selections from Bruce Weber’s My Education.
Rather than following a strict chronological order, the volume is organised by themes according to key points such as family, creativity, physicality, humanism, sexuality and expression.
As you would expect, the volume features fashion photography, including well-known images published in major fashion magazines such as Vogue, GQ, W Magazine and Vanity Fair, alongside unpublished reportage photographs.
It includes portraits of renowned figures from the world of culture, from Anselm Kiefer to Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg, actors and actresses such as Elizabeth Taylor, Matt Dillon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp, and directors such as Martin Scorsese and Ingmar Bergman.
When Weber met Bergman, he was given precise instructions: “Don’t bring in any lights, and whatever you do, you must not direct him”. The ice was broken thanks to a book by the Swedish author Pär Lagerkvist, whom both the director and the photographer appreciated.
You can also find portraits of famous photographers such as Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon, sports champions like Michael Phelps, music stars such as David Bowie, Madonna, Leonard Cohen and Tina Turner, fashion designers such as Hubert de Givenchy, and politicians like Nelson Mandela.
Weber’s images reveal his ability to capture the spirit of his subjects. He says that he focuses on this more than the clothes they wear, even during fashion photography shoots. This is evident, for instance, in his portraits of Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Stella Tennant.
No photo shoot is ever the same. This was certainly true of Weber’s pictures of Paul Newman for Esquire in 1988. It was certainly not a pre-arranged shoot.
A series of difficulties were actually faced by him, but he still succeeded in getting the shot he wanted when “a group of track and production guys surrounded him, and I noticed that he was fidgeting with his hands, playing with something in a way actors do sometimes to take the nervousness away. In one last desperate attempt, I got down on the ground, crawled to the center of the group between their legs and pointed my camera up to take the photograph”.
Bruce Weber, who in his career has directed seven short – and feature – length films, published more than 37 books, and has held more than 60 exhibitions worldwide, in this book, also talks about the people who inspired him on his creative journey, including Lisette Model, whose courses he attended at the New School for Social Research. As Weber recalls, Lisette “wanted us to look deeper (…) She was interested in what lay beyond the surface”.
Indeed, the volume is Weber’s tribute to collaboration, inspiration, and creativity. It contains texts by authors such as Charles Bukowski and John Steinbeck, as well as others Weber wrote to highlight his connections with friends, teachers and collaborators who contributed to his approach to photography and filmmaking.
The book, which Weber calls “my book of paper planes”, contains, page after page, his creative journey, which began when he was a boy. “On his 12th birthday, this lucky boy received an Argus C3 35mm camera from his parents. (…) Part of him knew even then that he wanted the photographs he took in his backyard to go out into the world (…)”, like the thoughts he once entrusted to little paper planes.
Paola Sammartano
Bruce Weber. My Education
Published by Taschen
Hardcover, 24.3 x 35.5 cm, 3.41 kg, 564 pages
Edition: Multilingual (English, French, German)
125 euros
https://www.taschen.com/it/books/photography/08182/bruce-weber-my-education/
