WEBER

SOME OF FASHION’S MOST ICONIC PHOTOGRAPHS HAVE BEEN taken by the legendary photographer and filmmaker Bruce Weber. In fact, many of his now-famous subjects, including everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to Madonna to Colin Farrell, were photographed at the very start of their careers by Bruce for magazines like Interview, Life, and Vanity Fair. Bruce’s images helped to make them internationally recognizable, always from an unexpected perspective, and often with an offhand sense of humor. Who else could convince Elizabeth Taylor to be photographed with a real live bear?

To celebrate our spring issue, Bruce spoke with us about his journey from small-town Pennsylvania to the worlds of high fashion and Hollywood. Along the way, he become a star in his own right, changing American visual culture and its representations of sexuality, masculinity, and desire. Bruce’s meandering stories are filled with allusions to a bygone golden era of big stars, dreamy landscapes, and a freer, more open society—all with a nostalgia and yearning that fuel his current photography and filmmaking. But he takes inspiration from the present as well, pointing to Harry Styles as someone from our current moment he’d like to photograph. Having shared almost 45 years with his wife, Nan Bush, Bruce shares his unique take on the nature of attraction: “I feel so lucky that I have a feeling of romanticism in my life every day, and I do my best to put that back into my films and photographs.”

Early Days

It was the camera that introduced Bruce, a selfdescribed introvert, to the life he was meant to lead. Taking photos also helped Bruce put things into perspective. He recalls his dad taking pictures and making films while his family spent time together in their garden. These peaceful memories are among his happiest reflections on the times they shared, even as he witnessed a dysfunctional side of his family as well. When Bruce was invited to show his work at the

Whitney Museum of American Art early in his career, he chose to present his father’s photographs on the wall opposite his own. At the opening, Bruce told his father how great his images were, and how he wished he could take pictures like that.

Though he prefers his pictures to be, in his own words, “a little off,” Bruce credits his parents—who became his first test subjects—for helping him refine his idealized aesthetic. “My dad was very athletic, and my mom was beautiful. They were both in great shape. My mom played a good set of tennis.” He was also inspired by his handsome, all-American roommate at Denison University, who came from a farm in Illinois and built his own motorcycles. With a little Pentax camera gifted to him by his mother, Bruce brought his vision to life and realized that this whole photography business was pretty nice.

Many people might not know Bruce’s own career started off in front of the camera. As he explains, “What’s a better way to learn about photography than being a model yourself?” Though he might not have been the best subject—Bruce would often arrive late or bring his dog with him, a big no-no back then—he made up for it by helping the photographer with his equipment, which allowed him to witness firsthand what it was like to work on that side of the lens. He still gets a chuckle thinking about those days of modeling, fondly recalling some of the photos Francesco Scavullo took of him. Bruce was even a cover star, with a photo of him appearing on the front of a GQ-produced teen magazine, something his boarding school roommates enthusiastically teased him about.

Calvin Klein & Obsession

Bruce made a departure from his traditional Midwestern upbringing with some of his best-known campaigns: the Obsession fragrance work for Calvin Klein in the late 1980s.

“I had met a woman in Brazil who I was crazy about— Luíza Brunet—and we did some nude photos on a huge swing we built. I later found out that she was four months pregnant at the time. The way people worked back then was so different.” He recalls asking his sister, who was producing the shoot, to tell all the models to please put on clothes before they sat down to lunch. The thing Bruce remembers most, however, was everyone’s comfort level with themselves.

“You realize that this absolutely could not happen today. People are too inhibited and nervous. I was lucky to work for Calvin at a time when there was a great freedom of expression. I think that feeling has been kicked around a lot and suppressed by much of the work that’s available for people working in fashion today.” Though it seems like so many of today’s stars are wearing little more than underwear on the red carpet, Bruce points to what he considers the biggest difference. “In those days, people were concerned with more than creating a sensation.”

It’s a Dog’s Life: C.Z. & Cornelia Guest

Bruce’s life has also been a long love affair with his dogs, as evidenced in his most recent coffee-table book with Taschen, The Golden Retriever Photographic Society. Bruce and Nan are both long-time supporters of numerous animal charities, including the Hamptons-based Animal Rescue Fund, The Humane Society of New York, and Bully Crew, which trains dogs to get along better with humans. This fondness for the canine world was shared by two of Bruce’s great friends, the legendary socialite and gardener C.Z. Guest and her actress daughter, Cornelia Guest, the ’80’s “Debutante of the Decade” and Park’s previous cover girl. Bruce recalls the first time he met C.Z. in Palm Beach. After picking him up for lunch in a vintage paneled station wagon, she looked him up and down and demanded, “Where are the dogs?” Bruce knew in that moment they would be friends for life. “You meet so many people when you’re walking your dog, and you meet lots of people who want their dogs photographed. That’s been a nice thing in my life.”

Bonkers & Elizbeth Taylor

Bruce has been obsessed with Elizabeth Taylor all his life— to the point that his concerned parents once made him see a psychiatrist. Years later, when he was about to photograph her for the first time, the actor Roddy McDowall (a mutual friend) advised Bruce not to mention his childhood fascination. But Bruce and Elizabeth would eventually become good friends— so when she found out about his childhood preoccupation, she merely laughed it off. Bruce then confessed they could never be together, because they would wind up having 100 different kinds of animals in the house.

By the time they met, Bruce knew that Taylor had been photographed with almost every animal imaginable, from elephants to squirrels to everyone’s favorite dog, Lassie. Bruce knew one special creature she hadn’t yet shot with: a bear. So he arranged for her to meet a gentle, specially trained bear named Bonkers. To prepare for that day, Bruce had to make sure that Elizabeth wouldn’t be put off by the fact that Bonkers was used to being the biggest star in the room.

“I told Elizabeth, ‘He’s a little like you. He’s a big film star, and he has his own trailer.’ It’s very hard to bring a bear into the city, so we shot at a ranch outside of LA. Elizabeth had a magical way with animals—it was obvious the moment she was in the picture with Bonkers. It was wild to see his paw and her hand next to each other with the Burton Diamond. I was tripping out!

“Elizabeth was a very, generous person who helped a lot of our friends when they were sick with AIDS. She gave me a lot of courage to stand up for myself in this world of fashion, art, and photography. We always talked about making a little film together, even though by the time I knew her she wasn’t really able to. It was hard for her to walk and do any sort of physical activity.”

This astonishing turn of events—a deep, sincere friendship with his childhood idol—was not lost on Bruce. “I was sitting on Elizabeth’s bed one time, talking with her and her grandson Quinn. I stopped myself mid-sentence, realizing, I am so lucky! Having friends like Elizabeth in my life has really helped me get through some difficult times. And I was so fortunate, because I had a camera with me every step of the way.”

Early Films: Backyard Movie, Broken Noses, & Let’s Get Lost

Bruce began to express himself through another visual medium: film. His first documentary, Broken Noses, won a Grand Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Shot with a small team and his good friend, cameraman Jeff Preiss, they made what Bruce describes as “a little home movie” about a boxer and Olympic hopeful named Andy Minsker, who ran a boxing gym for boys and in the process became a father figure to many of them.

Next up was the Academy-Award-nominated documentary Let’s Get Lost , a film about the jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. “I have always loved Chet’s music. For years, he couldn’t come back into the US because of his many arrests for drug possession. When I found out he was finally going to perform again in New York, I went down to the jazz club in the Village to listen to him play. When he finished, I asked him if I could do some pictures. He told me to come over to his place the next day. I went with my assistant Jeff, and we hung out. I asked him to play a song for us that I loved called ‘Blame It On My Youth’ by Oscar Levant. I think that a lot of us could go, ‘Well, that’s kind of like my life, I guess.’ That’s how my adventure with Chet began.”

One of Bruce’s early short films, Backyard Movie, combines old home movie footage with hand-written text describing his sexual awakening and cheeky footage of frolicking dogs. Bruce took us behind the scenes of this breakthrough work, which premiered at the New York Film Festival:

“I had met a guy from Cuba who strangely had blonde hair. Ric was a great athlete with the most perfect body. For Backyard Movie , I had him jumping on a trampoline behind our house with one of my dogs. All of a sudden, a policeman came by, and he asked, ‘Bruce, is there a naked guy jumping in the air here?’ And I said, ‘No, not really. My dog is on the trampoline.’ Just then, two older women passed by on the beach. They looked toward my house, and Ric started popping above the bushes, wearing nothing. I was afraid they were going to have a heart attack and I was going to get arrested! But it all worked out.”

New Documentary:

Photographer Paolo Di Paolo

The Treasure of His Youth

More recently, Bruce decided to celebrate the life and work of another visionary, this time the Italian photographer Paolo Di Paolo. After a brief but illustrious career documenting post-war Italian life, culture, and society, Di Paolo surprised his contemporaries when he quit photography at the age of 40. Through his new feature film, The Treasure of His Youth, Bruce ensures that Di Paolo’s legacy will endure. As to why Di Paolo made the dramatic decision to leave his career behind, Bruce’s film points to two possible motives: his intense dislike for the emergence of the paparazzi in Rome, and a love affair gone wrong with a beautiful socialite. “He just didn’t want to be a part of that kind of life. In his photography, whether it was about poor farmers living out in the country or wealthy aristocrats at a society ball, Paolo made the individual stand out with dignity and grace. On some level, I don’t think he could handle the heartbreak of the world changing so dramatically around him, and the fear of, ‘What if people don’t like my pictures?’”

This visually compelling documentary works on many levels, celebrating Paolo and Bruce’s mutual love affair with Italy. “When I was growing up, Rome was my Hollywood. My grandparents, my parents, and my sister all came back from their trips to Italy with these incredible stories. I finally went with a bunch of kids from boarding school, and it was