Santa Cruz. Monterey. hollister. Pebble beach. Seaside. Soledad. Grab your board and head to any one of these legendary left-coast beaches near John-Paul Bruno’s hometown of Carmel, and it’s a virtual guarantee that it’ll be chock-full of muscle-bound, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Anglo-Saxon-archetype males who look like they’ve just stepped out of the volleyball game in Top Gun. So how, exactly, did Bruno—a dark-complexioned, self-described “Italian-looking” hopeful from a rustic mountain town—break into a modeling scene that’s famous for cranking out models that look way more like Zack Morris than A.C. Slater?
Ironically enough, it was Bruno’s work on the other side of the camera lens that opened his eyes to the world of modeling. “I kind of got bored shooting landscapes and that kind of stuff,” he recounts. And as his photography brought him through the back door of the fashion business, it didn’t take long for him to head into the world of modeling the old-fashioned way—knocking on the door. Literally.
“I walked into an agency called Look Models in San Francisco, and at the time it was the top agency, I’d say, and I just walked—not knowing—in with a regular picture book full of snapshots, kind of hokey, and they actually liked me,” he says with a chuckle. “I was going down the elevator and got a call, and they were like, ‘Hey, we liked you. Come back up.’ And I got signed and had my first photo shoot with a professional photographer that same day.”
After cutting his teeth under the wing of renowned agencies like Elite Model Management and Ford Models, Bruno followed his newfound career on a whirlwind journey across the country, working with diverse clients from Banana Republic and Armani Exchange to runway stints with Neiman Marcus and the legendary LA Fashion Week ’09 that saw him calling Miami, New York and San Francisco “home.”
But as the economy progressively lightened his many employers’ pockets toward the end of 2008 and work became harder to come by, Bruno packed his bags again in 2009 for LA, where a chance trip to San Diego connected him with publicist Evee McFarland. “We became friends first,” Bruno says. “And she liked my photography, so she hired me for a few jobs out in Nashville. So that was the plan.” A scant few months later, Bruno moved to Nashville and barely set his bags down before immersing himself in Music City’s creative community.
Bruno says he’s been busy since he got here, and busy on both sides of the camera, nonetheless. After arriving in Nashville in November of 2009, he dove headfirst into everything from shooting country artists like Sammy Kershaw and Gretchen Wilson in a military awareness campaign to the Sprint 500 race and music video shoots, all the while building his word-of-mouth publicity to keep the work flowing in. And even though he’s spent the past few years making tracks in just aboute-very other fashion metropolis in the country, Bruno says he’s ready to put down some roots in Nashville for the time being.
“I’m hoping this will be a permanent thing for me,” he says. “I’ve been moving around for five years, and I’m at the point now where I need to settle down and start preparing for the future.” Nashville’s laid-back, urban culture strikes a chord with Bruno’s ideal lifestyle.
“I got into modeling for the lifestyle—working out, staying fit, going surfing, doing things to keep yourself healthy and looking good,” he says.
Never one to let grass grow under his feet, Bruno’s already parlaying his talents into even more diverse projects, from acting to fueling his love for writing country music. And his key to success? A mantra from a childhood friend’s mother, former model Jackie Carr: “’Never give up. Always give 100 percent Always give 100 percent. Always make it clear that you want to work.’ If you keep pushing the envelope and keep bugging everybody, you’ll beat out the lazy guys—I’ve never stopped,” Bruno says.
And at the rate he has managed to keep himself busy with anything and everything in fashion, it’s safe to say that this Cali-raised new kid in town still has a long road ahead of him. ✪
http://jon-paulphotography.com/
Tags: Pretty Faces