Bruce Percy’s process begins without agenda. He prefers to arrive somewhere and respond emotionally rather than pre-visualize or direct the landscape toward a preconceived result. For him, photography is an exercise in submission: a way of living in the present moment and accepting what nature gives him. This attitude shapes both the making of the images and the pace at which they develop.

In the field, he is usually drawn first to something elegant or beautiful, though he often cannot say exactly what he is looking for until he finds it. The response is emotional rather than analytical. Later, through editing, patterns and themes begin to surface. He works from the bottom up, allowing the photographs to accumulate before their larger coherence becomes visible.

A crucial part of his approach is the reduction of the scene into tone, form, and color. As his understanding of photography changed, he moved away from seeing landscapes as collections of objects and toward seeing them as arrangements of tonal and formal relationships. That shift also made his work more abstract.

He is not driven by commercial pressure or rigid timelines. Some work resolves quickly; other bodies of work take years. His Bolivian altiplano photographs, for example, required repeated returns over eight years before he felt ready to make a book. A project ends only when he stops finding new things to do with it.

Bruce Percy’s conversation reveals a photographer who places feeling before explanation. Readers quickly understand that his process is rooted in emotional response, and that he prefers not to over-intellectualize the act of making pictures while he is in the field. That in itself is revealing: the photographs begin not with certainty, but with sensitivity.

The interview also shows how profoundly his understanding of image-making changed over time. One of the most useful insights is his description of moving from photographing objects—trees, mountains, rivers—to photographing luminosity, form, and color. This shift helps explain both the minimalism of the work and its increasingly abstract quality.

Equally important is his attitude toward success, failure, and creative rhythm. He speaks with unusual clarity about photography’s ebb and flow, about the need to step back when things are not working, and about treating every stage as part of a longer process. Readers come away not just with a sense of how Bruce Percy photographs, but of how he lives with photography: as a way of being present, letting go, and remaining open to where the work wishes to lead.

Bruce Percy’s conversation reveals a photographer who places feeling before explanation. Readers quickly understand that his process is rooted in emotional response, and that he prefers not to over-intellectualize the act of making pictures while he is in the field. That in itself is revealing: the photographs begin not with certainty, but with sensitivity.

The interview also shows how profoundly his understanding of image-making changed over time. One of the most useful insights is his description of moving from photographing objects—trees, mountains, rivers—to photographing luminosity, form, and color. This shift helps explain both the minimalism of the work and its increasingly abstract quality.

Equally important is his attitude toward success, failure, and creative rhythm. He speaks with unusual clarity about photography’s ebb and flow, about the need to step back when things are not working, and about treating every stage as part of a longer process. Readers come away not just with a sense of how Bruce Percy photographs, but of how he lives with photography: as a way of being present, letting go, and remaining open to where the work wishes to lead.