PHOTOGRAPHY ABOUT

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
~ William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

These photographs are an imprint of my psyche. They are a visual depiction of a spiritual journey. They reflect my inner life, my dream life. If you want to know who I am, who we all are, look quietly at these images and let them speak to you.
~ Bruce Joel Rubin

Although Bruce’s film career has been entwined with the imagery of cinema, his primary focus has always been on narrative storytelling more than the visual. In recent years, he has shifted his focus to the image itself and discovered photographs, even in abstraction, have wonderful stories to tell.

Bruce began extensive walking several years ago as a daily practice and started to notice images on the streets and sidewalks that caught his eye. These were images created by nature, rust, mold, tire marks, and even bird droppings. He would pull out his iPhone and snap photos, capturing the images and downloading them onto his computer. Soon he began playing with those images in Apple Photos, cropping them, adding contrast, enhancing color. The aesthetic thrill of seeing an unexpected beauty emerge from the mundane world around him awakened him to a new level of perception. Every walk became an adventure in learning how to witness the unexpected universe beneath his feet. He discovered many of his images looked like stars and galaxies, as though the world around us was a microcosm of the universe beyond. In time, he developed a painterly aesthetic, sensing the source of contemporary art was hidden in the very surfaces that surround and encompass us. He began a dialogue with these surfaces, which continues to deepen and expand every day.

FOR THE LATEST PHOTOGRAPHS, VISIT THE ARCHIVES

Origins

One of the joys of seeing these photographs is the impossibility of imagining their source. In the collections below, we step behind the scenes and show how the magic materializes, how the mundane becomes transfigured into something completely other. The origins of most photos, however, will remain a mystery so as not to diminish the unexpected beauty of what is being shown.

The images below come from a dumpster on a driveway in Los Angeles. They were waiting to be found, waiting to be seen.