Profiles

From the Archive: Photo Review Aug/Sep 2002:

Adam Bruzzone loves the vigorous light and strong colours of his native South Australia but, thanks perhaps in part to his heritage, he is equally passionate about the sublime and dramatic landscapes he's come to know on visits to Italy.


A remote hill town in the mountainous region of Liguria in Italy. A graduate filter helped hold detail and enhance the colour of the clouds.

A busy professional photographer based in the city of Adelaide, Bruzzone confesses that these days he doesn't often have the opportunity to shoot images purely for his own enjoyment. However, as he says, "thankfully, with a lot of my wine clients, it is shooting for myself. They'll often say, ‘look, we just want some really nice shots of this vineyard or this location', so I shoot for myself and it's just fantastic. In that creative area I'm very very satisfied."

Bruzzone first began to take his photography seriously when he was in university. He'd played around with picture taking in a casual way before then. But it was something he had fun with, he says, and didn't even get to hobby status until he happened to notice one of those photographer profiles that run in most editions of National Geographic. "I thought, ‘if he can do that, so can I.' It really began from there."

Fresh out of Flinders University, Bruzzone found his hard-won degree work in biology and psychology were enough to get him a researcher's position. The work was repetitive and dull but on weekends he'd make up for it by photographing intensively. This turned out to be a smart career move. One day the research job vanished in a round of budget cuts. "At the time it was a very traumatic event, but it was also a catalyst for me to see if I could make photography work," says Bruzzone.

Patience was rewarded during a tourism shoot, the day had been abysmal but calmed just before sunset at the same lonely stretch of beach on Yorke Peninsula SA.

His first paying job was for a small overseas motor sport magazine that was happy to pay for his images of the Adelaide Grand Prix. The usual bread and butter work came along, too. "I was doing anything and everything," he says. From weddings to corporate head-and-shoulders shots and winery commissions, the jobs kept trickling in, until at a certain point he realised he was a working photographer.

"My passion's always been natural light, landscape and people," says Bruzzone who, since becoming a full time photographer has now made a number of trips to Italy. The first encounter with Italian light and landscape was both a shock and a delight.

"The first time I was lost. I'd gone from summer time here to their winter. Even in winter, in Australia the light is still quite contrasty and strong. There it is just so soft." A fan of such famous colour composers as Pete Turner and Jay Meisel, he adds, "I like contrast and I like strong colour and I found it very hard to adapt."

But adapt he quickly did. "For me it's almost like a classic landscape in terms of paintings," he explains. "Everything is spectacular. I don't know if it's because in Australia the beauty is in its vastness and, sometimes, harshness. There the beauty is very classical in its lushness and in its spectacular quality. I remember seeing the Alps and the Dolomites for the first time and I just couldn't believe it. And there it's easy to experience many different extremes in a very small area. I like the history, the little hill towns. It's easy to get caught up in the whole culture and the surroundings and I tend to express  my happiness with the place through my pictures."

Although he doesn't yet own a digital camera, Bruzzone has a Nikon LS2000 scanner and he's learned to use Adobe Photoshop. He shoots with both Nikon and Hasselblad cameras and is the kind of photographer who enjoys putting film through the sprockets. "I like having a lot of film to experiment with," he confesses. "If I have my way, I can shoot 15 to 25 rolls a day when it's an editorial subject", adding, "It's like a journalist taking notes."

This image was originally taken at Nepabunna in the Flinders Ranges of Mr.Coulthard an aboriginal elder of this community, on colour 35mm transparency but then transferred to Polaroid Type 55 B&W film and a print made.

But in the end, great picture making says Bruzzone is not about blasting through a lot of film. "A lot it is the logistics of organizing things to try and get the best light. That's one of the real secrets of photography."


See Photo Review magazine Issue 6 for the print edition of this profile which includes additional images.

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