AT A GLANCE
- Known for
- Close, flash-lit street photographs of New York and, later, tight color portraits of faces
- Works in
- Black and white for most of his career; color and digital since the early 2010s
- Camera
- Leica, with a handheld flash; a Leica S for his color portraits
- Also
- Member of Magnum Photos since 1998 (full member 2002); Guggenheim Fellow (2013)
- Start with
- A Beautiful Catastrophe (powerHouse Books, 2005)
- Links
Bruce Gilden (born 1946) is an American street photographer from Brooklyn, New York. He is known for photographing people very close, often with a flash, on the streets of New York and in places like Haiti, Japan, Ireland and England. He joined Magnum Photos in 1998 and has published more than 20 books.
The story
In 1969 Bruce Gilden wanted to go to Coney Island, but someone had stolen his car. So he hitchhiked there from Corona, Queens. He had owned a camera for only about a year. On the beach he did not try to hide. “I was very conspicuous, wearing boots, long pants, and an army jacket,” he remembered.
Photography was a new idea for him. Born in Brooklyn in 1946, he had studied sociology at Penn State for a short time. Then, in 1968, he saw Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blowup. Soon after, he bought a camera. Apart from some evening classes at the School of Visual Arts in New York, he taught himself.
Coney Island became his first long project. He kept going back until the mid-1980s. He walked the beach from Coney Island to Brighton Beach and back, often twice in one day. In one picture from 1982, a woman on the rocks points at a man near her, while bathers walk past in the sun.
In 1974, at 27, he also made his first trip to the Mardi Gras in New Orleans. He returned seven times, until 1982, and kept his flash in the pocket of his army jacket. Later came long projects in Haiti, Japan, Ireland and on the streets of Manhattan. In 1998 he joined Magnum Photos.
Why so close, and why these people? His father, he says, was a tough guy who smoked big cigars, wore hats and drove Cadillacs. “First I dealt with my father; my pictures were my father,” he told an interviewer. “If someone had jumped at my father with a flash, he would have knocked them out.”
In the 2010s he turned to color. With a digital Leica S he made tight portraits of faces in England and the United States, now with permission. These were collected in the book Face in 2015. The young man in the army jacket had become a photographer working face to face with his subjects.
The people changed and the camera changed. The reason stayed the same. “When I take pictures I’m photographing myself, I don’t care what anybody else thinks,” he says.
The work
- 1946Born in Brooklyn, New York
- 1968Sees the film Blowup and buys his first camera
- 1969Begins photographing Coney Island, his first long project
- 1974First trip to the Mardi Gras in New Orleans
- 1992Publishes Facing New York (Cornerhouse)
- 1996Wins the European Publishers Award for Photography for Haiti
- 1998Joins Magnum Photos; becomes a full member in 2002
- 2013Receives a Guggenheim Fellowship
- 2024Exhibition Why These? at Fotografiska New York
Lessons
Do not hide. Gilden never tries to sneak a picture. He works openly, close to people, and trusts his reading of them.
Go back again and again. He photographed Coney Island from 1969 to the mid-1980s and the Mardi Gras on seven trips.
Photograph what moves you. He chooses people he feels a connection with, often because of something in his own past.
Try this: pick one busy place near you, like a market or a beach. Go back five times in one month. Each time, walk the whole length of it twice and get one step closer than feels easy.
Gear
Gilden is known for working with a small camera in one hand and a flash in the other.
Leica M rangefinder: his street camera. For a 2017 story in Leica’s LFI magazine he used a Leica M (Typ 240) with a 28mm Elmarit-M lens.
Handheld flash: his trademark. On the Mardi Gras trips in the 1970s he kept it in the pocket of his army jacket.
Leica S medium-format camera: the digital camera he started using through Magnum’s Postcards from America project. He made his color face portraits with it, for example with a 70mm lens.
Books
A Beautiful Catastrophe (powerHouse Books, 2005). A 140-page book of 86 tritone photographs of New York streets, made from the 1980s to the 2000s. The title comes from Le Corbusier, who called New York “a beautiful catastrophe.” The pictures are not grouped by date or place. They flow like a walk through the city, from Fifth Avenue to Little Italy. The best place to start if you want to see his classic close, flash-lit street work.
Coney Island (Trebruk, 2002). Photographs from his first long project, made on the beach and the midway of Coney Island between 1969 and 1986. Published as part of the Magnum Editions series and designed by the London studio Browns, the book uses Gilden’s own handwriting. A good book for anyone who wants to see where his way of working began.
Hey Mister, Throw Me Some Beads! (Kehrer, 2015). A 110-page hardcover with 52 duotone photographs from the New Orleans Mardi Gras. Gilden first went there in 1974 and made seven trips to Bourbon Street until 1982. The pictures show the crowds, costumes and energy of the carnival. It is early work, made at the same time as his Coney Island pictures, and a good companion to that book.
Face (Dewi Lewis, 2015). A large clothbound book of 104 pages with tightly cropped color portraits of faces. The pictures were made with a digital Leica S, in places such as West Bromwich and Romford in England and Minnesota, Iowa and Florida in the United States. The text is by Chris Klatell. It marks his move from black-and-white street work to color portraits made with permission. For readers who want to see his later work.
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