Bruce Gilden: Wall Portraits (Colombia)
Leica Camera is thrilled to announce a new exhibition at Leica Gallery London from celebrated photographer Bruce Gilden.
The name Bruce Gilden is synonymous with striking images – his unique and confrontational style has made him a stand-out Icon in the pantheon of legendary American street photographers.
Bruce Gilden has produced long detailed bodies of work in Coney Island, New York City, Haiti, Japan, France, Ireland, England, and across America. Gilden initially worked in black and white film for years, producing one-of-a-kind candid images of passers-by made with Leica and flash on hand. He has now expanded his famous modus operandi during the last decade to encompass digital color photography and posed portraits. Gilden’s work has been exhibited in Museums and galleries since the 1970s, and he has published no less than 23 monographs of his work.
Now Leica Gallery London is showing Bruce Gilden’s unseen ongoing portrait series taken on the street in Bogotá, Colombia. These wall portraits continue to reflect Gilden’s attraction to vibrant and out-of-the-mainstream characters. And this time in Bogotá, walking the streets of the capital’s working-class neighborhoods and inspired by the exuberant colors of the city’s walls, the street master found the perfect frame to shine a powerful light on ordinary passersby.
About the Author
An Iconic street photographer with a unique style, Bruce Gilden was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1946. He first went to Penn State University but he found his sociology courses too boring for his temperament and he quit college. Gilden briefly toyed with the idea of being an actor but in 1967, he decided to buy a camera and to become a photographer. Although he did attend some evening classes at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Bruce Gilden is to be considered substantially a self-taught photographer.
Right from childhood, he has always been fascinated by the life on the streets and the complicated and fascinating motion it involves, and this was the spark that inspired his first long-term personal projects, photographing in Coney Island and then during the Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
Over the years, he has produced long and detailed photographic projects in New York, Haiti, France, Ireland, India, Russia, Japan, England, and now in America.
Since the seventies, his work has been exhibited in museums and art galleries all over the world and is part of many collections.
The photographic style of Bruce Gilden is defined by the dynamic accent of his pictures, his special graphic qualities, and his original and direct manner of shooting the faces of passers-by with a flash. Gilden’s powerful images in black and white and now in color have brought the Magnum photographer worldwide fame.
Gilden has received many awards and grants for his work, including National Endowments for the Arts fellowships (1980, 1984 and 1992), French “Villa Medicis Hors les Murs” grant (1995), grants from the New York State Foundation for the Arts ( 1979, 1992 and 2000), a Japan Foundation Artist Fellowship (1999) and in 2013 a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. Bruce Gilden joined Magnum Photos in 1998. He lives in Beacon, New York.
BRUCE GILDEN – WALL PORTRAITS (COLOMBIA)
13 June 2022 – 28 August 2022
Leica Gallery London – UK
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