Remember how I was in Prague last December for an exhibition? The piece I wrote following that trip, on Bruce Weber’s first retrospective and forthcoming monograph, each titled My Education, is now published online by Aperture. It was surreal finally meeting the man, after years of editing his V and VMAN credits a decade ago. Seeing his submissions back then gave me a sense of his artistic convictions: Unlike the other fashion photographers, he would provide his own layouts and titles, often including handwritten text.
I specifically remember the grumbling that came from our art director being tasked with giving a full page to an original poem by one of Bruce’s models: a New York fireman who had neither been previously cast nor published. That was when I started to rethink the strange wholesomeness of the overtly sexual Abercrombie & Fitch catalogues and get into his films—part home movie, part fan art, all sincerity.
This article, called “Bruce Weber’s All-American Obsessions” (I didn’t title it) took some time to place, which makes me think: maybe I overestimated an interest in someone who’s last big press mention was a peak-MeToo misconduct allegation. Eventually, the edit was delayed, too, seeing as the show had meanwhile closed and the book isn’t yet announced.
To me, though, Weber is evergreen, and his work feels increasingly topical with the proliferation of 1990s-nodding lifestyle branding that puts that era’s Calvin Klein, Abercrombie, and Ralph Lauren on their mood boards. His early advertorial work set some standards that are clearly followed to this day. And besides, he’s still such an enigma, as an artist and in his personal life, both celebrated and misunderstood. Do I understand the artist and his oeuvre, after all this research and writing and an interview? To be seen!
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