getting out of the way

Photo: Jacques-Henri Lartigue

Another reason I wanted to do this movie was I’d get to shave my head. I always wanted to do that.

Photographer and actor Jeff Bridges captioning one of his stills from Making Iron Man, a book of photographs that he compiled for his colleagues on the film shoot.


Premiere Magazine ran a spread of Bridges’ photography years ago. Reminded of it tonight through a random association I googled to see what was out there and was rewarded with:

• The artist’s maddening to navigate but delightful to explore site, jeffbridges.com, which details all kinds of great stuff that he’s cooking on


• A site section dedicated to his photography along with some insight into the Widelux camera that he shoots with


• An introduction to the photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue, whom Bridges cites as an influence and who is really quite marvelous »

And then there's this, in which he says something my dad is always telling me about getting anything worthwhile done -- see: get out of the way:

The Wide-Lux is a fickle mistress; its viewfinder isn't accurate, and there's no manual focus, so it has an arbitrariness to it, a capricious quality. I like that. It's something I aspire to in all my work --- a lack of preciousness that makes things more human and honest, a willingness to receive what's there in the moment, and to let go of the result. Getting out of the way seems to be one of the main tasks for me as an artist.