page_title: Bruce Cratsley
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Bruce Cratsley / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Bruce Cratsley And Mr Muffit, Elsa Dorfman. The author of the article wrote to the photographer (Elsa Dorfman), requesting use of the portraits she did of Bruce Cratsley, and these images were provided as the primary means of visual identification of the subject of the article. This is a photograph (taken by the artist) of the main subject of the article and also illustrates the artist's life (his lover, his dogs). The subject is unique, and it cannot be replaced with text or free content media. I have the original email in which the phographer, retired from active work, is allowing me the use of these specific images. Do not crop images, they are art work thought like this
context_page_description: David Bruce Cratsley was an American photographer specialized in still lifes, portraits of friends, and gay life in New York City. He had a reputation of master of light and shadow.
context_section_description: Cratsley worked for many years as a gallerist at Marlborough Gallery before quitting in 1986 to become a full-time photographer.
  As "Bruce Cratsley", he exhibited in various New York galleries, like: Laurence Miller Gallery, Howard Greenberg Gallery and Witkin Gallery. Cratsley was represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery, a dealer of fine art photography based in SoHo.
  In 1978 Cratsley contributed the photo sequences for the musical The Class, performed by The New Ballet School at the New York City Center.
  In 1980, Cratsley's work, Atlantic City, 1977, an August beach scene, exhibited at the 11th Anniversary show at the Witkin Gallery, sold for $175.
  In 1989 Cratsley was awarded with the Guggenheim Fellowship for Photography, US & Canada.
  Cratsley documented his life with David Waine, who died in 1991. "I'd been photographing David since long before he became sick [...] at some point I realized that this was an extraordinary thing that was happening, and that I had an intimate relationship to it. I photographed David just a few hours before he died, not knowing what was about to happen [...] David was very spiritual [...] My pictures are a poetic, spiritualized loook at AIDS".
  In 1995 Cratsley was included together with Barbara Norfleet, Olivia Parker and John Sturges in the list of bestselling photographer at Robert Klein Gallery, Boston. Cratsley's B&W photos sold quickly at a starting price of $400. Klein said of Cratsley: "Bruce transforms commonplace things through a keen sense of light and composition, and very skilled printing".
  Cratsley documented the Lesbian and Gay life, and in particular the New York City LGBT Pride March. Another event he documented was Wigstock, an annual outdoor drag festival that began in the 1980s in Manhattan's East Village that took place on Labor Day. Pictures from both events are now at the New York Public Library, in their permanent collection.
  In 1999, Cratsley was included in the volume Desire: contemporary photography from the visual AIDS archive project.
  In 2011 a photograph by Cratsley, Louvre Window, Paris, 1980, signed and dated, sold at $300.
  On September 15, 2016, Ron Tarver, Swarthmore Instructor of Studio Art and Pulitzer Prize, gave a lecture about Cratsley, Swarthmore graduate, at LPAC (Lang Center for the Performing Arts).
  Works by Cratsley are also at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Harvard Art Museums.
caption: Bruce Cratsley And Mr Muffit, by Elsa Dorfman
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