Bruce Morton childhood home was the farming village of Bowen, Illinois. The first seventeen years of his life were spent learning the do's and don'ts of small town rural life. Restless, he wanted to escape the environment of gossip and everyone knowing everyone. Over the next eight years he received a Bachelor of Science degree in photography from Southern Illinois University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Arizona State University. His favorite subject matter in graduate school was photographing in the Sonora Desert using a medium format film camera. This work was printed as silver gelatin prints. In 1976 he was invited to be a visiting artist/teacher in the photo department of Derby College, in Derby, England.
Upon his return to the US, he moved back to Arizona and for the next thirty three years pursued non-photographic work as a landscape gardener. In 2007 he sold the adobe home he designed and returned to his home town of Bowen, Illinois where he currently lives. This move was a conscious decision to return to his roots, and photograph the people and land he wanted to escape so badly as a young man.
Bruce has participated in numerous exhibitions in the United States as well as Great Britain for over forty-five years. He has been recognized and published in several blogs such as Lenscratch and F-stop Magazine. More recent exhibitions include online exhibits with the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography, the Keirnan Gallery, group exhibitions at the Perspective Gallery, the San Francisco International Exhibition, Photo Spivia, and the Currents Exhibition at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans. He has also been featured in the blogs of aCurator.com., aphotoeditor.com, all-about-photo.com, snappedaway.com, and PDN's Photo of the Day.
In 2013, Bruce self-published his first photo book titled FORGOTTONIA. It is about the cycle of life in the rural area of far west central Illinois. It has ninety-one photographs (starting in 2006) in color and black and white with a forward by Aline Smithson and was edited and designed by Paula Gillen. Forgottonia is currently in its third printing and is part of the libraries of the Southeast Museum of Photography, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Harry Ransom Center, Austin, George Eastman House, Houston Center for Photography, the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Lens Culture, Indie Photobook Library, and Photo-eye.
In 2016, Bruce published his second book FORGOTTONIA - The Audience. It is a study of the people within this 16 county region in far west central Illinois. The focus is on groups of people at events where they gather which includes county fairs, school programs, auctions, funerals, and church.
In 2018, the third and final book of the Forgottonia trilogy, FORGOTTONIA - The Suburbs was published. It is the largest book with 100 color photographs, lyrics from the song “Rebellion in Forgottonia” by Randy Sollenberger, a fellow native of this region, and a poem and quote from Carl Sandburg another native Forgottonian.
Bruce’s latest series of photographs, Prairie Man and Prairie Woman, were created using a Hasselblad camera, black and white film, ink jet prints on Hahnemuhle paper. These environmental portraits of friends starting in 2018, were taken in Bowen, Chicago and the state of Illinois. Also, continuing is Prairie Land documenting the farm country and landscape around Bowen, IL.
Bruce Morton Photography
P.O. Box 107
Bowen, IL 62316 USA
217-617-6204
brucemorton@adams.net
www.bruce-morton.net