Bruce Charlesworth

Who is Bruce Charlesworth?

Bruce Charlesworth is a visual artist known primarily for his photographic, video and multimedia works. He is considered one of the pioneers of post-modern staged photography and an innovator in video installation and interactivity. He received his BA in Art from the University of Northern Iowa and his MFA in Painting from the University of Iowa in 1975.

Charlesworth began to exhibit in New York and internationally with the photo-novellas Eddie Glove, and Special Communiqués. Other staged photographic series followed, including Trouble, Fate, Man and Nature, Confiscated Objects, and Serum. Surveillance was the first of many of what Charlesworth termed narrative environments, works that use video and/or audio to power a narrative within a designed space. Projectile, Wrong Adventures, Private House, Reality Street and Airlock are a few subsequent multimedia installations. Video and film works include Communiqués for Tape, Robert and Roger, Dateline for Danger, A Stranger's Index and The Happiness Effect. Throughout much of the 1990s Charlesworth worked on his feature-length experimental film project Private Enemy - Public Eye. In 1989 a book was published entitled Private Enemy, Public Eye: The Work of Bruce Charlesworth, which was also the name of a survey exhibition of his work at the International Center of Photography. The recent interactive video installation Love Disorder was featured in the 2008 Zero1 Biennial in San Jose.