I second your comment on Jeff Bridges being an interesting photographer. I have a copy of his 2003 book, "Pictures." I had no idea he took pictures, let alone such good ones.

Virtually all the pictures in the 189-page book wereshot with a panoramic camera (the Widelux, which uses 35mm film) and are shot in available light in black and white.

In his intro, Peter Bogdanovich writes,

"Jeff's choice of the Widelux camera is emblematic of his own vision, which generously includes as much as possible of the ragtag world in which he has spent so much of his life."

That ragtag world, as seen in these remarkably poised yet surprising pictures, is that of the movie sets where Bridges has made his name.

Most of the pictures were taken in the '80s and '90s. There are many famous faces--Bianca Jagger, Robin Williams, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Landau, Michelle Pfeiffer, Cybill Shepherd, Isabella Rossellini, John Turturro, Benicio Del Toro, and self-portraits with colleagues and family (such as brother Beau), to name just a few.

But that isn't what makes the book so good.

Pictures of celebrities are as plentiful as movie popcorn, and many are about as substantial. But here the attraction is the spontaneity of the people and the relevance of everything in the frame.

"The Widelux is a fickle mistress," writes Bridges, who began taking pictures in high school. "Its viewfinder isn't accurate, and there's no manual focus, so it has an arbitrariness to it, a capricious quality.

"I like that. It's something I aspire to in all my work--a lack of preciousness that makes things more human and honest, a willingness to receive what's there in the moment, and to let go of the result."

This quote from Bogdanovich sums things up nicely:

"Quite commonly referred to as the most versatile and underrated star on the American screen, he is also hugely gifted in a number of ways not known to the general public.

"He paints, he composes, he sings, and as this book so vivdly demonstrates, he is one hell of a photographer."