Bruce Bernard

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Bruce Bernard (

Sunday Times and the Independent
and photographed many influential artists in a career lasting nearly 40 years.

Early life and education

Bernard was born in London, and was the middle of three sons to the English architect Oliver Percy Bernard and his opera singer wife Dora Hodges (d. 1950), who performed under the name of Fedora Roselli. His siblings were the poet Oliver Bernard and the columnist Jeffrey Bernard.[2] He was a paternal cousin to the actor Stanley Holloway.[3]

Bernard had brief spells at a number of boarding schools, eventually finishing at

Sunday Times's magazine as a picture researcher in 1972; he later became the paper's picture editor, a post he held until 1980. It was during this time that he produced Photodiscovery: Masterworks of Photography 1840-1940, which became his most successful work.[5]

Career

He left the Sunday Times and joined The Independent where he wrote for the paper's magazine. He wrote Vincent By Himself,[6] about the painter Vincent van Gogh. The book juxtaposed Van Gogh's paintings and drawings and featured excerpts from the letters to the painter's brother, Theo Van Gogh. He also frequently wrote short articles under pseudonyms, including Joe Hodges and Deirdre Pugh, for the Independent.[2]

Writing for The Independent, the columnist Adrian Searle commented: "[Bernard] had a shrewd, passionate eye, and was possessed of one of the most acute bullshit detectors I have ever encountered."[2]

In 1994 Bernard curated a photographic exhibition for the Barbican Centre gallery. His portraits included those of Leigh Bowery, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, and Euan Uglow. The photographer John Riddy opined that "Bernard's portraits of British artists are the only one's [sic] to escape cliché."[2] In 1999 he put the finishing touches to the Bruce Bernard Photography Collection for the James Moores Foundation.[2]

The Victoria and Albert Museum held an exhibition of 100 photographs chosen by Bruce Bernard.[7] An accompanying book 100 photographs, A Collection by Bruce Bernard was published by Phaidon Press in 2002.[8]

Personal life

Bernard died of cancer in 2000. In the photographer's obituary, Searle remarked: "[Bernard's] sense of what was good and bad art, good and bad photography had an almost moral dimension, but one which was entirely personal, and thoroughly ethical."[2]

Publications

  • Photodiscovery: Masterworks of Photography, 1840-1940 (1980)
  • Humanity and Inhumanity: The Photographic Journey of George Rodger (1994)
  • Century (1999)
  • 100 photographs, A Collection by Bruce Bernard (2002)
  • Vincent by himself (2004)

References

  1. ^ "Mind Your Language: Dot Wordsworth continues her look at BBC booklets on pronunciation published in the 1930s"
  2. ^ a b c d e f "Bruce Bernard: Picture editor and writer whose passionate eye honed a sharp response to the images of a century", The Guardian, 31 March 2000, accessed 30 January 2017.
  3. ^ "He was the nice one: farewell to Oliver Bernard", London Evening Standard, 4 June 2013
  4. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, accessed 30 January 2017. (subscription or UK public library membership
    required)
  5. ^ "Photodiscovery: Masterworks of Photography 1840-1940", Abe Books, accessed 30 January 2017.
  6. ^ Vincent by Himself, by Bruce Bernard, Abe Books, accessed 30 January 2017.
  7. ^ Victoria and Albert Museum (2016). "100 Photographs by Bruce Bernard". Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  8. ^ Phaidon. "One Hundred Photographs". Retrieved 16 February 2017.

General references

  • Holloway, Stanley; Richards, Dick (1967). Wiv a little bit o' luck: The life story of Stanley Holloway. London: Frewin.
    OCLC 3647363
    .

External links
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