Untitled from Mafia Funeral

Bruce Gilden

Bruce Gilden is a photographer best known for his dynamic, spontaneous, and uninhibited close-up portraits taken on the sidewalks of New York City and elsewhere. Fascinated from an early age by the vibrant eccentricity of life on the streets, Gilden began photographing people at Coney Island and later during Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Since then, he has traveled around the world, snapping pictures of rural life in Ireland, street markets in Italy, Yakuza gangsters in Japan, and Voodoo rituals in Haiti. Gilden’s approach generally involves shooting the faces of passersby at close range with a flashgun without any prior planning or permission, giving his images a spontaneous and often confrontational charge as the glare from the flash infuses his work with a silvery patina. The result features harsh contrasts between light and dark that accentuate every mark and blemish on the face of his subjects and form a detailed record of life in all its imperfection.