Over the few decades since Jeff Bridges has made a happy home in Santa Barbara, the world has known him largely through his prominent — and also blissfully offbeat — persona as an actor. He was, and ever shall be, “The Dude,” the iconic slacker character in the Coen brothers’ quirky classic The Big Lebowski, and countless other characters going back to the 1970s, up through his late career, Oscar-winning (for best actor) role as a soused late career musician in Crazy Heart. More recently, he took on an age-appropriate role in TV’s Old Man.
But there is much more to Jeff Bridges than the cavalcade of characters he has played, and Santa Barbara has come to know some of the many facets of his creative and philanthropic life. He has tended the personal fires of being a recording and touring musician, a visual artist, advocate for battling child hunger, and a passionate photographer, the latter role he’s currently going public with.
Bridges’s fascinating exhibition, called simply Pictures, is extending its Tamsen Gallery run through May 30, and it both exposes locals to this long-standing avenue of Bridges’s work, and champions something presently seizing his attention: the Widelux cause.
Both he and his photographer wife, Susan, have been strong advocates for and users of this esoteric panoramic format for many years, and the couple has taken its passion to an entrepreneurial manufacturing stage. Disappointed that the original Widelux Company had gone out of business, Bridges teamed up with a German manufacturer to rebirth the specialized camera, now available as the WideluxX…