Bruce Weber: Try a Little Tenderness | Fahey/Klein Gallery

Musée 

June 1, 2026

by Isabela Ferriera 

Bruce Weber: Try a Little Tenderness | Fahey/Klein Gallery

The boy received a camera when he was twelve, it was an Argus C3 35mm, given to him in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, and with it the sudden understanding that the intimate world he had been drawing and filming in 8mm with his father and sister could be shared beyond the backyard. That early desire to extend tenderness outward into the world, to make the private visible and the visible tender, has never left Bruce Weber. It is the animating force of everything he has made since. 

Try a Little Tenderness, on view through June 6, 2026, at Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles, is one of the most anticipated exhibitions of Weber’s career. Drawing on decades of photographic work spanning fashion, portraiture, documentary and the deeply personal, it unfolds as a visual memoir of how an artist is formed, not by formal instruction alone but by friendship, mentorship, love, collaboration and the sustained practice of looking at people with full attention and genuine affection.

Weber studied theater at Denison University before transitioning to filmmaking at New York University, where a chance introduction by Diana Arbus brought him to Lisette Model’s influential photography classes. Model’s humanistic approach, grounded in emotional presence over technical precision, gave shape to  Weber’s artistic instincts.  The photographs in this exhibition demonstrate that instinct across every subject and setting. Jeff Buckley in New York City in 1993, guitar case on his back and a bottle of wine in hand, caught in an unguarded moment of radiant possibility. Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange in Santa Fe in 1984, playful and easy together in the afternoon light. Muhammad Ali at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn in 2001, surrounded by young sparring partners, still drawing the world toward him. Louise Bourgeois in New York in 1996, seated on a park bench beside one of her own sculptures with a composed, knowing expression that signals complete mutual understanding between artist and photographer.

The exhibition ranges widely across Weber’s career, from the sun-drenched sensuality of the Adirondacks in 2003 to the joyful chaos of Uncle Lionel Batiste and Dr. John with the Treme Band in New Orleans in 2008. From Carolyn Bessette Kennedy in Glen Cove Long Island, lying in the grass with a cockatoo and a dog, to two young men in Porto Ercole, Italy, in 2022, stretched out in afternoon light with a guitar and the unhurried ease that has always characterized Weber’s best work. Across all of it, the emotional register remains consistent: warmth, curiosity, a profound respect for the lives of the people in front of the lens. 

This exhibition coincides with the publication of “Bruce Weber: My Education,” a 565-page monograph published by Taschen and available at the gallery. Together, the book and  show make the fullest case to date for Weber as one of the defining image-makers of the last 50 years: a photographer who understood from the very beginning that tenderness is not a soft quality but a demanding and exacting one, and that making it visible is the most serious work there is.