Share

Jeff Bridges was born 1949 in Los Angeles. As a child he appeared in television series along with his brother Beau and beside his father, the well-known actor Lloyd Bridges. His first major role was in the 1971 movie "The Last Picture Show" directed by Peter Bogdanovich, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His versatility as an actor has been proved in the more than seventy movies that he has been in during the course of his career. When people think of Jeff Bridges they think of "The Fabulous Baker Boys", "The Fisher King", "Fearless", "The Big Lebowski", "Arlington Road", "K-PAX" and many more movies. For his portrayal of Bad Blake in the film "Crazy Heart" Jeff Bridges won in 2010 the Academy Award for Best Actor, the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role.

Jeff Bridges is also a dedicated musician and artist. As a composer, singer and guitar player he has produced a record and contributed songs to the soundtrack of his films, he has also made a name for himself as a painter and photographer.

Jeff Bridges: Jeff and Beau

Click on image to enlarge.

Jeff Bridges' interest in photography began at high school after seeing a Wide-Lux being used by a photographer at his school. The Wide-Lux is a panoramic camera that was first produced in Japan in 1948. Instead of a traditional shutter, it has a slit that, as the lens pans, exposes the film. The Wide-Lux frame is a lot like the 1:8:5 ratio of a typical movie and because of it's panning lens, it functions as a sort of bridge between still photography and moving pictures. Jeff Bridges uses the 35mm version with a 28mm lens that pans nearly 180 degrees. In 1977 he received his first Wide-Lux as a belated wedding gift from his wife Susan, a professional photographer at the time. He began to carry the camera with him on movie sets and started taking pictures. Since then he has taken numerous black-and-white photographs and in 2003 a collection of some of his best photo pieces was published in a book titled "Pictures". The book is like a 'behind the scenes' look at some of the movies he was in, and the viewer can see how Jeff Bridges uses the idiosyncrasies of the Wide-Lux to create a 'Jeff Bridges' style' that is as unique as many of the film roles he has played.

The exhibition "Jeff Bridges. Pictures" at the Bugdahn und Kaimer Gallery in Düsseldorf is the first solo show of photographs by Jeff Bridges in Germany and a contribution to the "German Premieres" project on view in Düsseldorf galleries for the "Quadriennale 2010".