Bruce Weber

Bruce was born and raised just outside Pittsburgh, in the farming and coal-mining town of Greensburg, PA. His love affair with the camera started early—Bruce would often spend Sunday afternoons doing art projects and making 8mm films in the backyard with his father, a businessman, and his sister Barbara. In 1966, after a couple of years studying art at Denison College in Ohio, Weber transferred to New York University to study acting. His first apartment was a fifth-floor walkup between Little Italy and Chinatown—freezing in the winter, blazing in the summer.  It was there that Bruce built his first small darkroom and started taking headshot portraits for actors and actresses just starting out. In many ways, this proved to be great training for his future as a fashion and portrait photographer. Bruce would talk endlessly with each person about what they wanted their headshot to express, and how to communicate that feeling through the clothes they would wear and the lighting he would use.