Bruce Gilden - street photographer

'I am known for taking pictures very close, and the older I get, the closer I get.'

Bruce Gilden's childhood in Brooklyn endowed him with a keen eye for observing urban behaviors and customs. He studied sociology, but his interest in photography grew when he saw Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow-Up, after which he began taking night classes in photography at the New York School of Visual Arts.

Gilden's curiosity about strong characters and individual peculiarities has been present from the beginning of his career. His first major project, which he worked on until 1986, focused on Coney Island, and on the intimacy of the sensual, fat or skinny bodies sprawled across the legendary New York beach. During these early years Gilden also photographed in New Orleans during its famous Mardi Gras festival. Then, in 1984, he began to work in Haiti, following his fascination with voodoo places, rites and beliefs there; his book Haiti was published in 1996.

In June 1998 Gilden joined Magnum. He returned to his roots and tackled a new approach to urban spaces, specifically the streets of New York City, where he had been working since 1981. His work culminated in the publication of Facing New York (1992), and later A Beautiful Catastrophe (2005); getting ever closer to his subject, he established an expressive and theatrical style that presented the world as a vast comedy of manners.

His project After the Off, with text by the Irish writer Dermot Healey, explored rural Ireland and its craze for horseracing. Gilden's next book, Go, was a penetrating look at Japan's dark side. Images of the homeless and of Japan's mafia gangs easily bypassed the conventional visual clichés of Japanese culture.

 Haiti 1984 - 1995

 GO - Japan

'In 1998, I met an ex-professional boxer and martial-arts expert in Japan, and we became friendly. He introduced me to these two yakuza, and we went for dinner in a small tempura place in the Ginza district of Tokyo.

My father was a racketeer type, so they got along with me and I got along with them.

I know their background of respect, and generally they're polite. Some of the low-level yakuza that I've seen in an area of Tokyo called San'ya are really nasty and vicious, though - not nice people, and quite dangerous.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/nov/20/best-shot-bruce-gilden 

 5 Weeks after the earthquake and beyond

 USA. New York City. 1986

 USA. New York City. 1989. Feast of San Gennero, Little Italy

 USA. New York City. 1984. Feast of San Gennero, Little Italy 

http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_9_VForm&ERID=24KL53ZS6V

There is Sergey, a small-time gangster whom his cellmates nicknamed Wild Boar. There is Vasiliy, a retired criminal who murdered his stepfather. And then there are the scenes from everyday life: a drunken Sunday afternoon picnic; a husband and wife snogging on a sofa; local thugs showing their mafia tattoos.

Gilden travelled to an ordinary village in Russia's decrepit provinces, 70km from the city of Yekaterinburg. Here, he encountered a bunch of small-scale hoodlums: pickpockets, armed robbers, car thieves, a crooked cop, junkies and a reformed ex-con. All live in a bleak community of decaying wooden dachas and muddy fields. All are trapped in a cycle of vodka, violence and crime. "I like bad guys," Gilden says. "My father was a gangster. I've always liked extreme-type dark side people."
Of the village where he spent 16 days in May and June, he says, "It's quite medieval. Life has been going on like that for centuries. Now they [the local mafia] are being squeezed out."

  A tattoo on Alexey's foot.

 Sergey fighting with Dmitriy, 28, a ­police colonel.

Vasiliy, 50, has spent 22 years behind bars. He killed his stepfather and also three men who had raped his wife.

Alexey, 29, has given up the criminal life. ‘Now I’m honest,’ he says.

 

Eugenie, 37, a drug addict and gangster. 'I've chosen this way. I dunno why. That's my life.  

Born in 1946, Gilden has always been attracted to the underclass. His previous studies have included portraits of Japan's Yakuza mobsters, the destitute, prostitutes and members of bike gangs. These low-life characters remind him, he says, of his late father: a cigar-smoking tough guy who may have been a criminal and who died broke. Gilden's subsequent career as a photojournalist is a one-sided conversation with his flawed dad. "I idolised my father. He screwed me around. The reason I stick a flash in people's faces is to get back at him in some way."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/27/bruce-gilden-magnum-russian-gangsters