Bruce Morton childhood home was the farming village of Bowen, Illinois. The first seventeen years of his life were spent in this small village where his father, Carlin and his uncle Hubert, ran the Morton Seed Company, founded by his grandfather, Roy A. Morton. Turning 18 and restless, he wanted to travel and experience other places. 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 and spending time in the darkroom making 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 work as a landscape gardener. In 2007 he sold the adobe home he designed and built by hand, and returned to Bowen, Illinois. 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.
Over his lifetime Bruce participated in numerous exhibitions in the United States as well as Great Britain. He was published in several blogs such as Lenscratch and F-stop Magazine. He had online exhibits with the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography, the Keirnan Gallery, and was in group exhibitions at the Perspective Gallery, the San Francisco International Exhibition, Photo Spivia, and 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 of three photo books in the FORGOTTONIA series edited and designed by Paula Gillen. The first book’s ninety-one photographs illustrates the cycle of life in the rural area of far west central Illinois. Forgottonia 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 people gathered together to watch and participate in events like county fairs, school programs, auctions, funerals, and church. All the images are taken within the 16 county region in far west central Illinois known as Forgottonia.
The third and final book, FORGOTTONIA - The Suburbs was published in 2018. 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, consists of environmental portraits of friends starting in 2018, taken in Bowen, Chicago and the state of Illinois. The works in this series were created using a Hasselblad camera, black and white film, ink jet prints on Hahnemuhle paper.
In 2024, Bruce Morton’s life’s work of photographs, negatives, and photography books was accepted into The Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin, Texas. His copyright and prints for sale or exhibition is handled by his good friend, Paula Gillen who lives in Guilford, CT. Contact: pgillen01@gmail.com
Bruce Morton Photography
www.bruce-morton.net