Table of contents:
- 1. Holiday season
- 2. Woman on the amusement alley
- 3. Baby Louis
- 4. Family vacation
- 5. Expensive toy
- 6. Yakuza
- 7. Photographers at the Valentino Haute Couture show
- 8. Drinking Santa
Video: People of the 20th century in colorful shots of street photographer Bruce Gilden
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Street photographer Bruce Gilden is known for his unique photography style. And his longstanding Coney Island series is a vivid illustration of the photographer's ability and an iconic project in which Gilden documented the leisure time of New Yorkers from the late 1960s to the 1980s.
1. Holiday season
2. Woman on the amusement alley
Bruce Gilden was born in 1946 in Brooklyn, New York. Studying sociology turned out to be boring for a person with his temperament, so after leaving university, Gilden decided to buy a camera and become a photographer in 1967. He attended several classes at the School of Fine Arts in New York, but essentially Bruce Gilden is a self-taught photographer. Since 1998 he has been a member of the Magnum Photos photo agency.
3. Baby Louis
On his first filming excursion to Coney Island, he hitchhiked as his car was stolen. It was 1969, he was living in Queens, and only a year had passed since Gilden got his first camera.
4. Family vacation
After studying sociology at Pennsylvania State University, Bruce Gilden was drawn to photography. And after watching the film "Magnification" by Michelangelo Antonioni, he finally confirmed his decision to become a photographer. In 1968 he bought an inexpensive camera and attended several evening classes at the School of Fine Arts in New York. Having started working in a taxi, I realized that there was no time left for shooting, and got a job as a truck driver in my father's business, and all my free time I walked the streets with a camera. Since then, Bruce Gilden has focused on strong characters and is guided by Robert Capa's phrase: "If the picture is not good enough, you were not close enough."
5. Expensive toy
When Gilden was documenting Coney Island, the area had long been nostalgic for its best times. It flourished in the 1890s. Then this place attracted New Yorkers with summer temptations, a long beach, a Ferris wheel and roller coasters. From the late 1960s to the late 1980s, when Coney Island was under Gilden's lens, the place was considered a lot more seedy. In part, it fell into disrepair due to competition from other Long Island beaches, as well as a series of fires and the fact that people with money could already fly to more exotic places.
6. Yakuza
7. Photographers at the Valentino Haute Couture show
Gilden admits that it was much easier to photograph on Coney Island than on the streets of New York. The background was clearer and the people were still. This did not guarantee the best shots. But it was easier to get a good shot because people were sitting or lying down without moving.
8. Drinking Santa
In 2015, Gilden published the book The Face, consisting of portraits taken from extremely close range, even by his standards. The streets are not visible in the frames, only the faces of people on which traces were left by life itself. In them, what passers-by usually turn away from - poverty and powerlessness, alcoholism or drug addiction.
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