About Bruce

Baltimore City

I examine workers and labor, using photography, installations, and community engagements. One example is Trade 4 Art, a barter network that I built in Baltimore between artists and tradespeople. Another example is Yard Work, a series of ephemeral portraits of lumberjacks that I print directly on leaves.

Materially, I use alternative photo processes to create images that examine alternative labor practices. My work has received support from the Cultural Affairs Department of Paris,… more

Gelatin Silver Prints in Ambient Light

Gelatin silver prints in ambient light are produced with the inherently chaotic nature of light, a brut and rudimentary exploration of picture-less photography embracing, not avoiding, elements of chance and surprise. The images involve no optics, no camera, no darkroom, working only with the primary elements of photography: silver gelatin paper, chemicals, light.  The paper is exposed, over hours or days, directly to ambient indoor/outdoor light and chemistry is applied by pouring, dripping, patting, splattering, splashing, brushing. Materials and gestures that are distinct and sequential in conventional photography here confront each other all at once and over and over.  Treated this way, the silver develops not in black and white but in a multitude of colors.  The resulting image is the very object exposed to light, without intermediary, like Daguerreotypes and other photographic processes that engender neither negative nor copy. The one-of-a-kind results are a mixture of my control and the force of natural elements: part prediction and part discovery. It is material photography, as in materialism, the doctrine that the only or fundamental reality is physical matter and that all beings, processes, and phenomena are manifestations of matter.

Images from this series have been exhibited at Galerie Lambert (Paris), the Kathleen Ewing Gallery (DC), School 33 Art Center (Baltimore), et al. The Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris) purchased eight Ambient Light images between 1992 and 1996.

1988 - present
  • untitled (AL227)
    untitled (AL227)
    10"x 8" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print 1990
  • untitled (AL045)
    untitled (AL045)
    20"x16" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print 1995
  • untitled (AL344)
    untitled (AL344)
    60"x41" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print 1999
  • untitled (AL185)
    untitled (AL185)
    16"x16" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print 1993
  • untitled (AL184)
    untitled (AL184)
    16"x16" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print 1993
  • untitled (AL323)
    untitled (AL323)
    10"x8" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print 1995
  • untitled (AL341)
    untitled (AL341)
    10"x8" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print 1995
  • untitled (AL343)
    untitled (AL343)
    40"x96" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print 1999
  • untitled (AL344)
    untitled (AL344)
    96" x 40" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print 1999
  • untitled_ambient light print
    untitled_ambient light print
    10"x8" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print 1994

Handcolored Gelatin Silver Photograms

Since 1987, I have been layering cutouts, leaves, rocks, body parts over pieces of paper as I print in the darkroom. These images use my archive of negatives as starting points for stories that turn any documentation into prose. It is a celebration of photography's capacity to invent over its capacity to document.
  • untitled (DW017)
    untitled (DW017)
    8"x10" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print 1987
  • untitled (DW029)
    untitled (DW029)
    8"x10" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print, color pencil 1987
  • untitled (DW030)
    untitled (DW030)
    8"x10" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print, color pencil 1987
  • untitled (DW033)
    untitled (DW033)
    8"x10" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print, color pencil 1987
  • untitled (DW053)
    untitled (DW053)
    12"x16" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print, oil paint 1989
  • untitled (DW055)
    untitled (DW055)
    12"x16" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print, oil paint 1989
  • untitled (DW056)
    untitled (DW056)
    12"x16" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print, oil paint 1989
  • untitled (DW062)
    untitled (DW062)
    12"x16" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print, color pencil 1989
  • untitled (DW065)
    untitled (DW065)
    12"x16" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print, color pencil 1989
  • untitled (DW070)
    untitled (DW070)
    12"x16" one-of-a-kind gelatin silver print, color pencil 1989

Latin America Works

In January 1988, I left Washington DC to spend six months in Mexico.  Instead, I traveled through Mexico and arrived in Guatemala where I lived for two years, traveling at times as far south as Ecuador.  In 1991, I returned to Guatemala for two more years.  I lived in a small Tzutuhil village, San Pedro La Laguna, in the mountains to the west of Guatemala by Lake Atitlan.  Over these formative years, I worked extensively with hand coloring and began making pinhole and stereo photographs. The first stereo photographs were made by bolting two cameras together.  The first pinhole photographs were made from powdered milk cans.
 
Since 1988, I have been printing the Latin American negatives and coloring the photographs with watercolor or pencil.  As of 2008, I have accumulated over three hundred one-of-a-kind photographs. There are more negatives to be printed. Parts of this series are in the collections of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, El Centro Nationale Para la Proteccion de la Antigua in Guatemala, and La Maison Europeene de la Photographie in Paris.  Parts have been exhibited at El Convento de Santa Clara, Anitqua Guatemala, Georgetown University, Martin Luther King Jr. Library, Le Faste Fou (Paris), Palais de Tokyo Museum (Paris).
  • Antonio and daughters_3D
    Antonio and daughters_3D
    6" x 8" gelatin silver stereo photographs, watercolors 1993
  • Making String
    Making String
    6" x 9' gelatin silver gelatin silver print, watercolors, color pencil 1994
  • Jose building a house
    Jose building a house
    6" x 9" gelatin silver gelatin silver print, watercolors, color pencil 1995
  • Marimba player
    Marimba player
    6" x 9" gelatin silver gelatin silver print, watercolors, color pencil 1995
  • Fiest Santiago
    Fiest Santiago
    6" x 9" gelatin silver gelatin silver print, watercolors, color pencil 1994
  • Tree (pinhole photograph)
    Tree (pinhole photograph)
    4" x 9" gelatin silver pinhole photograph, color pencil 1993
  • Market Todos Santos Gualtemala
    Market Todos Santos Gualtemala
    6" x 8" gelatin silver gelatin stereo photographs, watercolors 1998
  • Mayan ruins01
    Mayan ruins01
    4" x 5" gelatin silver gelatin silver pinhole photograph, color pencil 1996
  • Then and Now: San Pedro La Laguna Guatemala
    Then and Now: San Pedro La Laguna Guatemala
    I made this pinhole photograph in San Pedro La Laguna Guatemala in 1990, then paired it with an image from 2013 of the same street that I found on the Internet. digital print, diverse sizes
  • Then and Now: San Pedro dock
    Then and Now: San Pedro dock
    I made this photograph in San Pedro La Laguna Guatemala in 1990, then paired it with an image from 2013 of the same scene found on the Internet. My goal is to return to San Pedro at some point to produce a series of images of the rapid growth over the last generation, and a study of how the new economics have affected the village. digital print, diverse sizes

History Series

I came. I saw. I manipulated.
 
The process is simple: lay something on top of something else (in front of a car), like photograms, another process I have explored for years. It’s about spaces, how we shape them, perceive them, in terms of identity, status in this case, mostly screen spaces, and the spaces of memory. Photography is both pushed in front of the camera and pasted on after the camera. Source files for each image are visual notes from my archive of travels.
  • hist series04.jpg
    hist series04.jpg
    24"x18" digital print
  • hist series14.jpg
    hist series14.jpg
    24"x18" digital print
  • hist series16.jpg
    hist series16.jpg
    24"x18" digital print
  • hist series19.jpg
    hist series19.jpg
    24"x18" digital print
  • hist series39.jpg
    hist series39.jpg
    24"x18" digital print
  • hist series41.jpg
    hist series41.jpg
    24"x18" digital print
  • hist series53.jpg
    hist series53.jpg
    24"x18" digital print
  • hist series64.jpg
    hist series64.jpg
    24"x18" digital print
  • hist series88.jpg
    hist series88.jpg
    24"x18" digital print
  • hist series191.jpg
    hist series191.jpg
    24"x18" digital print