[3] In 1905, having studied painting in Europe, Bruguière became acquainted with photographer and modern art promoter Alfred Stieglitz (who accepted him as a Fellow of the Photo-secession), and set up a studio in San Francisco, recording in a pictorialist style images of the city after the earthquake and fire; some of them were reproduced in a book called San Francisco in 1918.

In 1918, following the decline of the family fortune, he moved to New York City where he made his living by photographing for Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar.

Throughout his life, Bruguière experimented with multiple-exposure, solarization (years ahead of Man Ray), original processes, abstracts, photograms, and the response of commercially available film to light of various wavelengths.

In the mid-1920s, he planned to make a film called The Way, depicting stages in a man's life, to be played by Sebastian Droste with Rosalinde doing all the female parts.

To obtain funding, Bruguière took photographs of projected scenes, but Droste died before filming started; so we are left with only the still pictures.