Bruce Charlesworth

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Bruce Charlesworth (born 1 February 1950) is a visual artist specializing primarily in photography, film and installation. He is considered as one of the pioneers of post-modern staged photography. He went to undergraduate school at the University of Northern Iowa and went to Graduate School at the University of Iowa. In 1978 he started to exhibit nationally, and soon developed such works as Eddie Glove (1976-79), and Special Communiqués (1981), both photo novellas. He is in the progress of editing his feature length film entitled Private Enemy, Public Eye.

Throughout the eighties, Charlesworth focused on such projects as Surveillence (1981), Projectile (1982), Wrong Adventures (1984), and Private House (1987) all of which were Installations with videos components. He was also involved with two photo series: Trouble (1982-83) and Fate (1984-87). Between the years of 1989-91, Charlesworth focused primarily on color photography, producing the series Man and Nature. In 1989 his book was published entitled Private Enemy, Public Eye, which would later become the name of his feature film project. More recent photo series include Confiscated Objects (1999-2000), and Serum (2003-2005).

Charlesworth's work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Walker Art Center, The Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Fundação de Serraives in Oporto, Portugal, among others. Charlesworth was the first resident artist of the Capp street Project in San Francisco.

He has shown in such museums as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, London's Tate Gallery, The American Film Institute, Whitney Museum of American Art, National Museum of American Art in Washington, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The International Center for Photography, among others.

For the year of 2007, Charlesworth was granted the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.