TOMMY BRUCE | Shaving Ube, 2024

All of the work I am submitting refers to my ongoing practice working with the furry community as my subject and focus. The images can be divided into two sets within the larger submission. The first set uses the furry figure to play with and examine tropes we associate with different animals. The first image shows Atmus, my furry persona and a white tailed deer, fellating the barrel of a hunter's rifle. The second image shows Ube, a sheep, posing demurely for the camera while he has his wool shorn from his belly. These images are meant to eroticize and dramatize the everyday associations we have with different animals and to explore new arrangements and subjects for contemporary photographic portraiture. The second set of images come from an ongoing series "Wild Night", wherein I make photographs of furries on an infrared camera in both natural and urban environments at night. The series is an ode to Kohei Yoshiyuki's "The Park" series, and a playful twist on game cam images of animals in the night.

BIO

Tommy Bruce’s work explores the formation of identity in contemporary culture through work with the Furry community. He lives in Portland, Oregon and was born in State College, Pennsylvania. He received a MFA in Studio Art from the University of New Mexico in 2020 and a BFA in Photography with a minor in Creative Writing from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2014. He is the secretary for the Pride Caucus of the Society for Photographic Educators. His work has been featured in exhibitions and publications internationally, including Art in America, The Institute for Contemporary Art Philadelphia, Vice, Lenscratch, and ArtForum. He has advocated for the legitimacy and value of the Furry community through public presentations, exhibitions, and programming for more than a decade. He was named one of “12 New Mexico Artists to Know” by Southwest Contemporary Magazine in 2021. His two-person exhibition with Mark Zubrovich, “Wild Desire,” opened at Sanitary Tortilla Factory in July 2023.