Contact
Telephone: (360) 691-4105
Mailing Address:
P.O. BOX 1791
Granite Falls, WA 98252
E-mail: barnbaum@aol.com
About Bruce Barnbaum
Bruce Barnbaum of Granite Falls gained Bachelor's and Master's degrees in mathematics from UCLA, then, after three years as a math analyst and computer programmer, abruptly turned to his hobby of photography as his life’s work in 1970. Today, after more than 50 years, it is still his hobby, but has also become a storied career.
To get the quickest yet detailed information about Bruce, see the Podcast he recently did with photographer/podcaster, Matt Payne. Here are two links to the podcast:
YouTube: (2) Episode 330: Bruce Barnbaum - Five Decades of Landscape Photography - YouTube
or
YouTube: https://youtu.be/kBxMOjzciuQ
Discoveries of a Lifetime: This is the title of Bruce’s upcoming book, a book destined to be seen as his Magnum Opus, featuring over 150 black and white photographs never previously exhibited nor published in books, together with image captions and longer essays, all of which will make you think deeply about a variety of topics, photographic and otherwise. A crowdfunding effort to raise funds for the book’s publication is taking place now, and will last throughout December. Please go to https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/583602943/bruce-barnbaums-discoveries-of-a-lifetime for details, to contribute to the project, and to purchase a book for yourself. For additional information about the book and the crowdfunding effort, please contact Bruce directly at his email address of barnbaum@aol.com. He will send you information about the crowdfunding drive, with hopes that you’ll help this book become a reality as well as a valued part of your own library.
Bruce’s photography expands upon the dynamics he finds in both nature and the works of man, relating forces to the sweeping forms that dominate his vivid imagery. Visually he emphasizes the best of humanity and nature, sometimes with bold realism, often with degrees of abstraction to heighten the mystery. He understands light and relationships of forms to an extent rarely found, and combines these understandings to an extraordinarily wide range of subject matter. His photographs often contain ambiguities concerning either the size of the scene photographed and/or its orientation, forcing the viewer to pause and think, and to become part of the creative process.
Starting in 1980 Bruce opened up photography of the slit canyons to the world for the first time. These remarkable wonders of nature had not been photographed prior to his discovery of them. In the canyons and elsewhere, Bruce works in both black and white and color, producing his b&w through traditional means (i.e., film and darkroom), and his color work digitally.
Bruce is also recognized as one of the finest black and white traditional darkroom printers on this planet. Beyond that, his color work, now produced entirely through digital processes, attests to his ability to see equally well in color or black and white, and to work digitally or traditionally to obtain the finest results. His work is represented by galleries in the United States and Europe, and is in the collections of numerous museums and private collectors worldwide.
Bruce has produced six photography books, four of which are exclusively art books, while the other two are textbooks—educational and art books combined. In order of publication, they are:
Visual Symphony, his classic book in four movements, was published in 1986 by Alfred van der Marck Editions. A second edition was published in 1988, along with a German Language version of the book, published by Edition Braus. The book is now sold out and out of print, but may be available via Amazon.com. For detailed information about Visual Symphony, or all the other books below, please go to the “Books” page on this website. (You can obtain a personally signed copy of any of the books below from Bruce, directly.)
Tone Poems - Book 1, a 12” x 12” hard cover book with 90 black and white images combining Bruce’s photography with music on a magnificent CD in a uniquely insightful collaboration with Pianist Judith Cohen, was published in 2002 by Photographic Arts Editions.
Tone Poems - Book 2, a 12” x 12” hard cover book with 91 black and white images, again combining Bruce’s photography with classical solo, duet and trio music led by pianist Judith Cohen, was published in 2005.
The Art of Photography, A Personal Approach to Artistic Expression, his widely acclaimed textbook, has sold well over 100,000 copies in printed editions. First published in 2010 by Rocky Nook, it was reprinted nine times, and translated into five foreign languages before being updated and published as a second edition in 2017. The second edition has been translated into four foreign languages and reprinted several times, making The Art of Photography today’s recognized standard for photographic insight and instruction. Together with eBooks, some 200,000 copies have been sold.
Plateaus and Canyons, Bruce’s only all-color art/photography book, published by Rocky Nook in 2013, explores the wonders of the Colorado Plateau, the extraordinary geological extravaganza of the American Southwest.
The Essence of Photography: Seeing and Creativity, published by Rocky Nook in 2015, was also translated into several languages, and won the German Photo book award as the best educational book published in Germany in 2015. The second edition, greatly expanded from the first edition (20 chapter vs. 8 chapters) was published in December 2020, and was soon followed by its eBook in March, 2021.
Currently Bruce is working on another book, destined to be his Magnum Opus, titled Discoveries of a Lifetime, featuring over 150 never-previously printed black and white images, plus captions for the images, and essays on photography, on our threatened environment, and on life.
Bruce is a frequent contributor to several photography magazines: He is currently contributing articles for every edition of SilvergrainClassics, a magnificent international magazine published in Germany, and written in English. More recently he has been contributing to medium format and elements magazines, two international eMagazines published in Canada. He has been published periodically in LensWork, with articles, interviews, his “1998 Portfolio,” a monograph titled Sand, Stone, and Sandstone (please see the Books page for details of the monograph), his photogravures of 5 images from his studies of the Cathedrals of England, and his "Slit Canyon" portfolio. Through his workshops, articles, lectures, textbooks, and his innovative photography / music collaboration Bruce is a highly respected photographer, educator, and pioneer.
Bruce has been an active environmental advocate for more than five decades, both independently and through organizations such as the Sierra Club (where he served on the Board of Directors of the Angeles Chapter from 1976-80, and the California Regional Conservation Committee), Audubon, the Stillaguamish Citizens' Alliance (which he co-founded in 1991) now renamed the Mountain Loop Conservancy, 1000 Friends of Washington, and the North Cascades Conservation Council (where he served on the Board of Directors from 1994 to 2015). As a photographer he has seen the changes in our land and our landscape—almost all of them for the worse—that have taken place in the 50 years he has actively been photographing our planet. He points out that we all live on this one magical globe called "Earth," and unless we love it, revere it, and protect it, we'll all perish with it. Currently, we are exploiting planet earth at an unprecedented rate, saddling ourselves with many self-inflicted problems: human overpopulation, global warming, deforestation, overfishing of the oceans, overuse of fresh water resources, pollution of the air, land, and waters (lakes, rivers, and oceans), and many others too numerous to detail. But humanity is doing little to correct any of these problems. We have enough knowledge to recognize the steps that should be taken to turn from our destructive ways to more intelligent, productive, and sustainable means, but we may not have the wisdom or political will to implement that knowledge.