Surfer on Washington Blvd. Photograph - Limited Edition of 250

Bruno Godbout (Canadian, born 1969). Very young, Bruno follows his father on weekends, camera in hand, with or without film, for walks or to test new equipment designed in the house workshop. In high school and college he signs up for all the photo activities offered and makes the most of the darkroom time available. During his graphic arts training at college, Bruno discovered the possibili­ties of computer-aided art, and computers will henceforth be an integral to his creative universe. After a university training in design and art history, he worked for a few years in desktop publishing. Attracted by digital photogra­phy, he adopted this medium in the summer of 2000. After a brief passage into motorsport photography, Bruno returns to his first loves - urban exploration, MCM architecture and the American desert. Calling himself a documentalist first, Bruno then set about capturing the rhythms and atmospheres of the North American urban environment. After several trips to Europe, he landed in San Francisco in 1999 to focus on California and the American Southwest. When Bruno roams the regions of Los Angeles, Las Vegas and the Mojave Desert, fascinated by both the contrast and the similarities between metropolises and deserts, two universes that seem diametrically opposed. He approaches photography of objects and places like a portrait painter, seeking to capture the emotion in inanimate things. "All objects and places have stories to tell, you just have to take your time to understand them, and you can then try to transmit them to others through the images produced." Bruno works mainly outdoors, with natural light; he imagines and composes his screenplay, then determines the ideal light and point of view to create the desired image. Trained in the argentic school, the number of actuations and retouching is very limited.