Art Gallery
Bo Bridges Gallery
There is a movie poster hanging in Bo Bridges’ downtown Manhattan Beach gallery that tells you everything you need to know about the man who made it. It’s the iconic image from “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation” — Tom Cruise, clinging to the side of an airbus going 180 miles per hour, 2,000 feet above the English countryside. What the poster doesn’t say is that the man who took that shot was hanging out the window of the same plane, his eyelids whipping violently in the wind, a camera duct-taped to his wrists, unable to see his subject through the tears streaming sideways across his viewfinder. He was just shooting into the blur, trusting that Tom Cruise was out there somewhere.
He got the shot.
That is the arc of Bo Bridges’ career: go somewhere insane, figure it out, get the shot. He has photographed every X Games since 1997. He has shot big wave surfers at Teahupo’o in Tahiti. He has captured Shaun White, David Beckham, Serena Williams, and Garrett McNamara on a 100-foot wave in Portugal. Men’s Journal called him “the Indiana Jones of action photography.” This year he premiered “Big Wave: No Room for Error,” a film he directed for Cosm’s 87-foot immersive dome theater in Inglewood, shooting with a 35-pound camera while swimming one-armed through the impact zone at Teahupo’o.
And then he comes home to Manhattan Beach, where his gallery on Manhattan Avenue has become one of the most beloved spaces in the South Bay.
The gallery has evolved over two decades into something that perfectly reflects who Bridges is. He moved it from Hermosa Beach to Manhattan Beach in 2013, and over time learned that what people really want from his work isn’t the celebrities and athletes — it’s the playing fields. The waves without the surfers. The mountains without the skiers. What Bridges calls “mind surfing” photos — images so vivid and transporting that you feel yourself inside them. His South Bay murals, including one on the downtown parking structure and another near City Hall, have carried that feeling into the streets.
The gallery has grown into a full creative hub: custom installations sized to fit a home stairwell or a law firm’s conference room, a line of apparel picked up by Target, puzzles and beach towels and coasters, and now a venue for private events and brand activations. Gallery director Mary Pat Chmiel offers onsite and Zoom consultations that open up Bridges’ decades-deep archives to clients anywhere in the world.
None of it would work without the signature — that bold, arching “Bo Bridges” that turns a beautiful photograph into a piece of memorabilia. Like the athletes he photographs, Bo Bridges has become a brand. But the gallery is where that brand comes home.
Bo Bridges Gallery
1108 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach
bobridges.com
