Bruce Gilden

A pillar of Magnum Photos, Bruce Gilden (born 1946) is celebrated for his raw, powerful portraits of life on city streets in his unmistakable “in-your-face” style. “I’m known for taking pictures very close,” he says, “and the older I get, the closer I get.” However, as its title suggests, this book offers a reconsideration of Gilden’s broader oeuvre. Together with approximately 90 black-and-white and color photographs in Gilden’s signature style, primarily from his ongoing Faces series, A Closer Look also features two new and previously unpublished studies on paintings by Raphael held in Brescia’s museum collections. By applying his close-up perspective to these idealized canvases, Gilden reinterprets the concept of “grace” expressed by the great Renaissance master.

Bruce Gilden first traveled to Haiti in 1984 for the famous Mardi Gras festivities. There he discovered an impoverished territory in the grip of numerous natural disasters but charged with a unique energy. True to form, Gilden immediately departed from the beaten track, choosing to roam the length and breadth of the island along serpentine paths that led him to meet people from the four corners of the island, and into situations that few would choose to encounter.
Gilden was to visit this country that he loves so much on 20 further occasions, tirelessly documenting the everyday lives of Haitians, their history and terrain. From vendors at the markets of major cities to its nightlife and funeral ceremonies, Gilden strives to take stock of Haitian culture and its rich visual diversity.
Images from the series were first published as a slim monograph by Dewi Lewis in 1996; the book won the European Publishers Award for Photography. Atelier EXB’s beautifully printed new volume greatly expands the series with previously unseen images comprising nearly half of the book.
Bruce Gilden (born 1946) has produced long and detailed photographic projects in New York, Haiti, France, Ireland, India, Russia, Japan, England and the US. He has published 28 monographs, among them, Facing New York (1992), Bleus (1994), Haiti (1996); After the Off (1999), Go (2000), Coney Island (2002), A Beautiful Catastrophe (2004), Foreclosures (2013), A Complete Examination of Middlesex (2014), Lost and Found (2019), Cherry Blossom (2021), Black Country (2022) and The Circuit (2022).

After recently moving house, Bruce Gilden discovered hundreds of contact prints and negatives in his personal archives, from work undertaken in New York, his native city, between 1978 and 1984. From these thousands of images, most of which are new even to their author, Gilden has selected around a hundred. Extending from the desire to revisit the work of his youth, this historic archive constitutes an inestimable treasure.

An extraordinary New York is portayed here, revealing an unknown facet of Gilden’s oeuvre. With all the energy of a young man in his thirties, and with no flash (before Gilden became famous for its almost systematic use), Gilden launched an assault on New York in a visibly tense atmosphere. In this extraordinary gallery of portraits, the compositions—mostly horizontal—simmer with energy, bursting with the most diverse characters, as though Gilden intended to include within the frame everything that caught his eye.

In this book, we see the guiding tropes of the work that was to make Gilden famous: sustained movement and tension, unrivalled spirit, and an instinctive and irreverent affection for his subjects, perfectly in cahoots with his city.

Bruce Gilden (1946) is a street photographer from Brooklyn, New York. Over the years he has produced long and detailed photographic projects in New York, Haiti, France, Ireland, India, Russia, Japan, England and America. Gilden has published 18 monographs, among them Facing New York (1992), Bleus (1994), Haiti (1996, European Publishers Award for Photography); After the Off (1999), Go (2000), Coney Island (2002), A Beautiful Catastrophe (2004), Foreclosures (2013) and A Complete Examination of Middlesex (2014).