Bruce Gilden

Why These?

Close up portrait image of a women with voluminous blonde hair and face with make-up — Donna, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA 2014 © Bruce Gilden

Bruce Gilden’s photos don’t flatter. They confront. A flash. A stare. A face you can’t forget. His subjects, outsiders, misfits, the overlooked, aren’t just photographed; they’re seen. His exhibition Why These? isn’t just a question about his work. It’s a question about us. Why do these images unsettle? Why do we avoid these gazes but still cannot look away?

Why These? brings together 41 photographs, handpicked by Bruce Gilden. Iconic images from his major projects in Coney Island, Haiti, New York and Tokyo take you on a visual journey through his career. Another selection of large-scale prints showcase his bold shift to digital color in 2013, a move that adds a contemporary edge to his signature style.

Two men in leather vests surrounded by more people — Ocean City, Maryland, USA, 2021 © Bruce Gilden

B/w image of a woman in a bikini at the beach pointing with her finger to the background — Coney Island, New York City, USA. 1982 © Bruce Gilden

Born in Brooklyn just after World War II, Bruce Gilden grew up in a turbulent household. As a child, he spent hours watching the “tough guys” on the street below, shaping his lifelong fascination with the “characters” he would later photograph. In 1968, he bought his first camera – a Miranda – and taught himself how to use it. His perspective pulls you into the grit of urban life: the daily routines, the fleeting encounters, the trips to the corner store. Through his lens, you don’t just see these moments – you feel the tension, smell the cigarette smoke, and take in the raw reality.

"Since I started photographing I adopted Robert Capa’s mantra “If the photo is not good enough you were not close enough”. A good street picture will smell of the street."

– Bruce Gilden

A Magnum photographer since 1998, Bruce Gilden has walked the streets of cities all over the world. His photos often taken with flash are raw and real. He cares deeply about the people he portrays. His bold approach has taken him to places and people that most would never get close to. His subjects often trust him enough to let him take their picture. From New York to Tokyo and Mexico City, he has photographed gang members, homeless people, sex workers, and others living on the fringes of society. Bruce Gilden’s ability to connect with these worlds comes from that same Brooklyn upbringing. Like him, the people in his photos have “experienced the streets.”

CREDITS

This exhibition is curated by Jessica Jarl (Global Director of Exhibitions at Fotografiska) and co-curated by Marie-Luise Mayer (Exhibitions Manager at Fotografiska Berlin) in close collaboration with the artist.

About the artist

Bruce Gilden is a visual artist who sees things with a poet's eye, carving beauty out of scenes and subjects that others might find intimidating, risky or simply repulsive. Never a detached observer, he actively seeks out the confrontations and characters that fit his vision, faces that reveal more life than they conceal, detailed evidence of grief and joy, hunger and loss. A roadmap of many and various lives, on physiognomies shaped by whatever damage, debauchery and destruction they have lived through.

Gilden has walked and worked the streets of innumerable cities for the past five decades, as a certified Magnum photographer since 1998. At seventy-seven, more acutely aware of the physical demands of his trade, and the proximity of impending mortality he has refined the lifelong accumulation of photographic knowledge into a tribal elder's wisdom.