Gallery With A Cause • Located in the New Mexico Cancer Center • Benefitting the NMCC Foundation
Please call gallery director Regina Held to arrange a private gallery tour, make a purchase, or ask any questions.
During his more than fifty years as a fine-art photographer, Bruce presented the story within the story via an assortment of artistic patterns, colors, juxtapositions, and themes which reflected the notion that, although “real life is the best entertainment value”, things may not always be what they seem. In a world accustomed to journalistic photography, he aimed to capture life’s nuances by using the lens as an art medium rather than as a recording tool, such that the image represents not literal fact but suggests instead certain underlying dimensions.
Bruce began his photographic career in the late sixties with a twin lens reflex camera, before graduating to medium format while eschewing 35mm work as insufficiently capable of capturing the decisive moment. But, as long as the debate still raged as to whether photography was ‘legitimate’ art, there was little market for the fine-art version, his abiding interest. A studio partnership in the early seventies offered commercial work: weddings, portraits, and various assignments that “one completes with whatever aplomb one can muster”. Such endeavors soon yielded to the need for a real job. Yet, during his twenty-five years in business, Bruce never abandoned his photographic ambitions; wherever he went, the darkroom followed until—along with medium format—it was replaced in 1995 by computer applications. Ten thousand rolls of film, countless darkroom hours, and endless digital experimentations later, Bruce continued to evoke life’s richness, sadness, mystery, and joy.
Between 1997 and 2001, Bruce and his wife lived in Portugal where, as an American devoted to digital photographic fine art, his work was sought after. Due to participation in group shows and solo projects on the circuit from prestigious galleries and important international biennials to smoky, underground bars and cafes throughout that fine country, his creations attained acceptance and maturity. Soon after returning to New Mexico, he founded 10000 Cranes Studio, an archiving and print-producing facility for artists and photographers. Major investments in printing and digital equipment allowed him to further refine his own art, and to pursue his lifelong passion for representing real life as “the best entertainment value.”