2005 Infinity Award: Lifetime Achievement
Bruce Weber, born in rural Greensburg, Pennsylvania in 1946, initially pursued theater at Denison University in Ohio, then turned to filmmaking at New York University. Diane Arbus introduced him to Lisette Model, with whom he studied at The New School for Social Research in the 1960s.In the late 1970s, Weber began photographing ads and commercials. He rose to fame as a preeminent fashion photographer during the 1980s. Working for Calvin Klein, Karl Lagerfeld, Gianni Versace, and Ralph Lauren, Weber pioneered a nostalgic, boy-next-door style that redefined the industry. His photographs have since appeared in Vanity Fair, American Vogue, Interview, Italian Vogue, and GQ, among many others.
He has also earned acclaim for his filmmaking, including Broken Noses (1987), a documentary about boxer and Olympic hopeful Andy Minsker; Let’s Get Lost (1989), a documentary on jazz trumpeter Chet Baker, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary; and Chop Suey Club (2001), a feature on wrestler Peter Johnson that is equally about the filmmaker’s own career and inspirations. The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art presented a retrospective of his short films and documentaries, along with numerous TV commercials and music videos, in 1998. His documentary, A Letter to True, an anti-war film, opened at the Berlin Film Festival and showed as an official selection at the Tribeca, Toronto, and Edinburgh Film Festivals in 2004.
He has published more than 15 books and his photographs are in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, among others. Weber received a Clio Award for Recognition in Apparel (1986); the International Documentary Association Award for both Broken Noses (1986) and Let’s Get Lost (1987); an ICP Infinity Award for Applied Photography (1993); and the 1st Annual Alfred Eisenstadt Award for portrait photography from Life Magazine (1998).