a life in pictures: remembering bruno schlumberger
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'one-of-a-kind citizen photojournalist' bruno schlumberger
wayne cuddington
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for more than three decades, ottawa citizen photographer bruno schlumberger wandered the city’s streets in search of angles, colour, lines and reflections — essentially looking for the ideal background for a photo whose subject he had not yet found.
then, having constructed the perfect scaffolding, he would wait for the moment when something entered the frame and electrified it, turning an urban still life into a fleeting piece of theatre.
“maybe just a woman walking a dog,” he said, “or just someone coming into the frame to finish it.”
he was a master at capturing what henri cartier-bresson, the father of modern photojournalism, called “the decisive moment,” when composition, subject and movement perfectly align for a fraction of a second. if you don’t recognize and act upon it the moment it happens, it’s gone.
not surprisingly, then, the everyday assignments of a newspaper photographer often disappointed bruno. “what is this sheeeet?” was a catchphrase he frequently muttered in his thick french accent, cameras dangling from his neck.
bruno schlumberger
wayne cuddington
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more often than not, though, he would return from an assignment with an image that far exceeded anyone’s expectations but his own. i say “image” because bruno famously submitted just one photo from many assignments, figuring that, if he sent in more, editors might choose the wrong one. if asked for a secondary image, he was known simply to re-send the same image, but cropped differently.
but he clearly knew what he was doing. by the time he retired in 2014, bruno had won six national newspaper awards, more than any newspaper photographer in canada. in a profession where many photographers go their entire careers without winning one, bruno’s record puts him in a class of his own, all the more impressive because many were taken not at news events, but on ordinary ottawa streets, where his patient eye turned the routine into the extraordinary.
eight-year-old kyla hugs her father, warrant officer shawn groves. bruno received a national newspaper award nomination for this 1997 photo.
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more than anything, bruno hated boring pictures. fortunately for citizen readers, he seldom took one.
“he would only shoot something that he thought looked beautiful,” recalls friend and former citizen photo editor howard fagen. “the subject was almost secondary. it was the shot itself.”
bruno schlumberger won the national newspaper award for feature photography for this 2007 picture of a paris painter hiding his face alongside a self-portrait.
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bruno died on march 5, at 77, after being diagnosed a year ago with als. he chose medical assistance in dying, a decision he characteristically made without fanfare or sentimentality. he knew the time of the appointment, but chose not to know the date.
“i don’t want to count the days,” he said.
he did, though, choose the song to go out on: daft punk’s electronic instrumental veridis quo.
anyone who went on assignment with bruno quickly learned two things: the first was the lengths he would go to get the best possible picture. “he would contort himself to get the right angle” recalls brigitte bouvier, who as a young shooter with the citizen was allowed to shadow bruno. “he wasn’t self-conscious. he didn’t care how he looked getting the shot. his focus was on the shot. that was all that mattered.”
a national newspaper award winner in 1982, this photo by bruno schlumbergershows a grandmother taking a reluctant grandson to his first day of school in ottawa.
bruno schlumberger
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the second was how unpredictable and blunt he could be. the first time i went on assignment with him, he was shooting a portrait of a playwright i was interviewing. after positioning her on a dais, bruno trained his lens on her and bellowed “ok! pose for me!” i don’t know how the playwright felt, but i was mortified.
when i recently recounted that story to him, along with the one of him telling a pair of husband-and-wife artists that “i do not like your art,” he seemed genuinely surprised. in 2014, he told citizen journalist doug fischer that he was simply “born that way,” adding “maybe i do it because it makes people react and the pictures are not so boring. i don’t know.”
but the stories are legion. while shooting the diminutive sex therapist dr. ruth westheimer once, bruno enthusiastically urged her to “give it to me, mummy.”
a 2020 bruno schlumberger photo of dr. ruth westheimer.
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during an orchestra rehearsal at the nac, after conductor pinchas zukerman reportedly asked bruno if he could hurry up and “get his snapshots,” bruno shot back that, if zukerman would refrain from telling bruno how to take a picture, he wouldn’t tell him how to play his “fiddle.”
at dinner once in the byward market, friend and former colleague wayne cuddington remembers bruno calling over the waiter to complain about a meal, loudly declaring in his thick parisian accent, “i would not feed that to my dog!”
“classic bruno, to say the least,” recalls cuddington. “he didn’t even own a dog.”
a man by the name of chad sits in the snow on rideau street in ottawa on jan. 28, 2009. it was one of two bruno schlumberger photos to win a national newspaper award that year.
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but bruno’s intensity made sense once you understood how completely photography consumed him.
born in angers, france, he came to canada in the late 1970s after leaving the french army and drifting through a series of jobs in paris. he was artistic, but photography was not a natural career choice — he never even owned a camera while in france.
“i was visual all my life,” he said. “i would look at people’s faces and not listen to what they were saying.”
but a job in the photo-engraving department at the london free press put him in contact with photographers, and he eventually applied to ryerson’s photography program, where he says he bombed on the written portion of his application, but made enough of an impression during the oral interview that he was accepted. it was at ryerson that bruno learned not just the technical aspects of photography, but the artistic ones: the importance of composition, light and patience.
it was also at ryerson that bruno discovered photojournalism, a form that suited both his artistic bent and his impatience with routine. it was a passion that flourished at the citizen, where photographers were encouraged to explore and find “spec” photos.
bruno schlumberger won the nna for feature photography in 1987 of silhouette shot of a scene of troops marching during the taping of a national war museum educational video.
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former citizen arts reporter nancy baele remembers how quickly it became clear that bruno saw the world differently from most people.
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“if you watched him long enough, you’d see this impish grin, and realize he was enjoying the whole thing,” she says. “but the photograph was what mattered. everything else was secondary.”
bruno described the satisfaction he got from photography as “discovering things that nobody looks at.”
bruno had few hobbies outside of travel and photography: he collected watches that he rarely wore, and had to have the latest in tv technology, but, until als slowed him down, rarely watched anything. when he was 60, he bought a bmw sports car, but sold it soon after.
“when you’re younger, you dream about things you don’t have, feeling they’re going to make you happy, right? and they might for a while, but they don’t.”
bruno and sanja schlumberger
wayne cuddington
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away from the newsroom, he shared his life with his wife, sanja, and their children nicolas, 34, and monica, 28.
and, while photography consumed much of his attention, even in retirement, his family remained an important presence.
“being a father helped me add meaning to my life. my mom always told me that happiness is responsibility. i’m not sure about that, but having kids makes you more aware of your duty on this planet.
“having a family helps you understand why you are here.”
after retiring from the citizen, bruno finally had the freedom to spend his days exactly as he liked. his idea of a perfect day was simple.
“it’s a sunny day,” he told me days before he died. “i’m in a hotel somewhere. i go out, have a croissant, a cappuccino, and then walk the streets for three hours.
“at noon, i stop for a glass of wine or two — and then i do the same thing until seven.”
even on trips with friends or family, he would sometimes disappear for hours at a time, wandering unfamiliar streets with his camera.
bruno schlumberger.
wayne cuddington
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“you’d turn around and suddenly bruno was gone,” recalls fagen. “then you’d see him two blocks back, studying a doorway or waiting for someone to walk through the light.”
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bruno described his outlook on life as embracing absurdity. if you ever find yourself lost in istanbul, for example, the solution is simple: follow a cat. it will lead you back to the centre of things.
in the final year of his life, als took away bruno’s mobility. his breathing became uncomfortable. his strength to take a photograph was gone. he took his final picture in september, in mexico.
“photography,” he said, “was a way of living.”
he dealt with the end matter-of-factly. without maid, he said, the end could have been some months away. “because of maid, i can shorten the pain for everyone.”
he took with him his peace of mind and sense of humour, and no expectations beyond the life he lived.
“so travel more. take pictures. have a cappuccino.”
85-year-old rené j. piché (second world war — le régiment de maisonneuve) at the war memorial in late afternoon light. bruno schlumberger. winner of national newspaper award, 2009.
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