Francis Joseph Bruguière (15 October 1879 – 8 May 1945) was an American photographer.

Biography

Francis Bruguière was born in

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

, to Emile Antoine Bruguière (1849–1900) and Josephine Frederikke (Sather) Bruguière (1845–1915). He was the youngest of four sons born into a wealthy banking family and was privately educated. His brothers were painter and physician Peder Sather Bruguière (1874–1967), Emile Antoine Bruguiere Jr. (1877–1935), and Louis Sather Bruguière (1882–1954), who married wealthy heiress Margaret Post Van Alen. He was also a grandson of banker

Peder Sather Peder Sather (September 25, 1810 – December 28, 1886) was a Norwegian-born American banker who is best known for his legacy to the University of California, Berkeley. His widow, Jane K. Sather, donated money in his memory for two of the sch ...

. His mother died in the 1915 sinking of the British ocean liner SS ''Arabic'' by a German submarine. In 1905, having studied painting in Europe, Bruguière became acquainted with photographer and modern art promoter

Alfred Stieglitz Alfred Stieglitz (January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was kno ...

(who accepted him as a Fellow of the Photo-secession), and set up a studio in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, recording in a pictorialist style images of the city after the earthquake and fire; some of them were reproduced in a book called ''San Francisco'' in 1918. He co-curated the photographic exhibition at the 1915

Panama–California Exposition The Panama–California Exposition was an exposition held in San Diego, California, between January 1, 1915, and January 1, 1917. The exposition celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal, and was meant to tout San Diego as the first United Stat ...

in San Diego, and nine of his photographs were included in ''The Evanescent City'' (1916) by George Sterling. In 1918, following the decline of the family fortune, he moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

where he made his living by photographing for '' Vanity Fair'', ''

Vogue Vogue may refer to: Business * ''Vogue'' (magazine), a US fashion magazine ** British ''Vogue'', a British fashion magazine ** ''Vogue Arabia'', an Arab fashion magazine ** ''Vogue Australia'', an Australian fashion magazine ** ''Vogue China'', ...

'', and ''

Harper's Bazaar ''Harper's Bazaar'' is an American monthly women's fashion magazine. It was first published in New York City on November 2, 1867, as the weekly ''Harper's Bazar''. ''Harper's Bazaar'' is published by Hearst and considers itself to be the st ...

''. Soon he was appointed the official photographer of the New York Theatre Guild. In this role he photographed the British stage actress

Rosalinde Fuller Rosalinde Fuller (16 February 1892 – 15 September 1982) was a British actress, born as Rosalind Ivy Fuller. Early life Rosalind Ivy Fuller was the third of four daughters born to a Portsmouth draper, whose eldest child was a son, Walter (bor ...

, who was debuting in ''What's in a Name?'' (1920), and she partnered him for the rest of his life. Throughout his life, Bruguière experimented with multiple-exposure, solarization (years ahead of

Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, although his t ...

), original processes, abstracts, photograms, and the response of commercially available film to light of various wavelengths. Until his one-man show at the Art Centre of New York in 1927, he showed this work only to friends. In the mid-1920s, he planned to make a film called ''The Way'', depicting stages in a man's life, to be played by

Sebastian Droste Sebastian Droste (born Willÿ Knobloch; 2 February 1898 – 27 June 1927) was a German poet, actor, and dancer associated with the underground art subculture of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. Droste relocated from his hometown of Hamburg to Be ...

with Rosalinde doing all the female parts. To obtain funding, Bruguière took photographs of projected scenes, but Droste died before filming started; so we are left with only the still pictures. In 1927 they moved to London, where Bruguière co-created the first British abstract film, ''Light Rhythms'', with

Oswell Blakeston Oswell Blakeston was the pseudonym of Henry Joseph Hasslacher (1907–1985), a British writer and artist who also worked in the film industry, made some experimental films, and wrote extensively on film theory. He was also a poet and wrote in non-f ...

. Long thought to have been lost, it has now been recovered. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he returned to painting.

References

Other sources

*Enyeart, James (1977) ''Bruguière: His Photographs and His Life'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf)

External links

Bruguière – Still Photograph Archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bruguiere, Francis 1879 births 1945 deaths Photographers from California Artists from San Francisco 20th-century American photographers