Bruce Hall

Bruce Hall was funded by the Arts and Accessibility Technical Assistance grant.

Bruce Hall is a legally blind photographer, teacher, and autism advocate. He lives in southern California and exhibits internationally. Bruce and writer Valerie Hall are collaborating on a large-scale, extremely personal project examining their twin sons’ profound autism. Hall’s photographs are collisions between a photographer with just five percent of normal vision and his profoundly autistic, frenetically kinetic twin sons, Jack and James. Hall is hungry for vision and connection with his boys.

Hall’s work has been published in textbooks, magazines including National Geographic, as well as shown in art exhibitions internationally including: the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian; UCR/ California Museum of Photography, Riverside, California; Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City; The Kennedy Center, Washington D.C.; Photo San Francisco; Photo L.A.; Flacon Arts Complex, Moscow, Russia; Galeria De Arte, Universidad Iberoamericana, Puebla, Mexico; Center for Visual Art, Denver, Colorado; Playboy Cyber Club; Insights, San Francisco; Naples Museum of Art, Naples FL, Sejong Center, Seoul South Korea, and the San Diego Natural History Museum.

The Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division purchased a portfolio of photographs from Hall’s Autism in Reflection series for their permanent collection. Bruce was featured in a short documentary for HBO, Dark Light: The Art of Blind Photographers, produced by Corinne Marrinan, and directed by Neil Leifer.

In 2010, Bruce Hall and Pete Eckert had the opportunity to photograph playmate Hiromi Oshima for Playboy. In 1970 Playboy translated the magazine into Braille. Forty years later, Bruce and Pete were the first blind photographers to shoot for Playboy.

Bruce lives in Irvine, CA with his wife and children. He devotes time advocating for autism awareness, and issues related to the blind. Hall continues to study photography, and collaborate with a small group of friends and artists to pursue future projects, as well as continue a life long study of the underwater landscape of southern California.