Bruce Gilden's tactics, repurcussions

I actually agree with him in his comparison of his style vs. sniping from across the street. His particular method is still not one I'd use, but I can't find any reason to be upset about it.
 
I took a workshop with Bruce last May. It was a great experience. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy who knew what he liked, and was quite blunt during some of the critiques. Everyone who was in the workshop had visibly improved over the course of the week.

One thing that I like about the videos I see on youtube; is when he is confronted, he is unbelievably smooth and nine times out of ten he ends up leaving on friendly terms.
 
To answer the original question, I doubt Gilden has been seriously thumped before or he likely would be questioning his techniques and that information would probably be easy to find. He also knows how to work a crowd as well as people. Someone who might initially want to thump him might end up laughing with him after he says something like "woah, I didn't get the shot -you were too fast for me!". He's got that social wit about him that probably protects him as much as his size and goofy demeanour.

That being said, I shot in NYC streets for 8 months and got chased down the streets, almost slugged by a crazy woman and a couple confrontational people who wanted to know what I was doing. I'm less than 6 feet tall, under 150lbs and 28 years old (but look 19) and come off as a "little punk", so I think I invite negative reactions moreso than Gilden. And I'm sure as assertive and fast-thinking as I am, Gilden would run circles around my ability to talk myself out of bad situations. However, some people cannot be reasoned with and I'm sure he's had his fill of close situations.
 
I think some of our members are caught in the metanarrative of "Street Photography". "Since he takes photo in the streets, his must be of 'Street Photography' = documenting life on streets in a natural way (of the 1950s)."

Bruce found his way, shoots so, and gets what he wants (which is actually pretty old-school in a conceptual way). If everyone did things in "the way it should be", what would the world look like?
 
haha

haha

neither, it's "fine art" so long as you took it with film and a leica and printed it old school :rolleyes:

robklurfield said:
Is this street photography? Or is it horsesh*t?:D
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I've met Bruce several times including a few times happening across him in Manhattan. I had dinner at his home with his wife and a few other students who also attended a workshop he taught a couple of years ago.

I have to say that if all I had to go on was the viral videos of him at work, I'd come to the same incorrect opinion of him as I've read here and in other places. You may not like his style on the street (and keep in mind that this is just one facet of the man's photography) but personally he is as nice a guy as I've ever met, a real pleasure to be around, and alive with some amazing stories including ones about his gangster father.

He's Brooklyn through and through but some of it is bravado -- underneath he's a very kind and generous soul.
 
perhaps Gilden is nice guy, when not hunting people with camera and flash, but would really hate to be one of his subjects. and am kinda feeling sorry for all those who have been.
 
Gilden himself says he has gotten into "a few" fist fights whilst photographing, but that he hasn't "lost" one yet (though he did get one Leica smashed when someone threw it to the ground). As a youngster he really wanted to be a boxer, so I'm sure he can handle himself. Also, taking photos of old ladies and bean-pole men is not the scariest thing in the world.

In fact, there was one biggish angry-looking guy in the background of one of these YouTube videos who was eyeing Bruce off at an intersection and it made me laugh to see how Bruce wouldn't even make eye-contact, let alone use him as a "subject".

Personally, I think Gilden is obnoxious, horrible (from his spoken interviews as well) and over-rated as an "artist". I also can't believe that people don't get smashed in the face for using flash at close-range without permission. I guess bullies have always picked on the weak and the vulnerable and always will - how nice to be able to do so under the protective umbrella of "making art" !
 
I would say he is a success. Look at all of you, he has obviously stirred some emotion in everyone. That's what we all try to do, right?
 
Jobin33 said:
I would say he is a success. Look at all of you, he has obviously stirred some emotion in everyone. That's what we all try to do, right?
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Except this discussion, and your comment, seems more about his approach as a type of "performance art" than about the resulting photographs. Performance artist "generates outrage"? Yawn. I think it's been done... (to death).

...Mike
 
peterm1 said:
Most of his street photos are really very ordinary in my view. In fact they have a kind of awful similarity about them -
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I've always thought that about Monet's series on Haystacks, or the garbage he painted in his garden, something about waterlillies, they are all the damn same.

Some people may say 'that is the point', and finding the small differences can be as fascinating as big overblown compositional turnabouts from picture to picture. Similarity hinting at the study of a subject, not the repetition of a subject. Repetition reinforces the message for many genre's of art, the spaghetti western, Andy Warhol's soup cans, August Sander's photographic portraits, and Gilden's study of what people look like close up and off guard. Do it with one photograph and its just one photograph, do it with many and the message is that everybody is similar is such situations, the face of the human race in a crowd is one of 'this is my personal space, keep out'. Gilden is photographing the mask's people wear in public, that enable them to survive and be 'in society' in large cities. That is why his style is different in his other projects, he chooses a way to photograph that brings out the essence of what he is photographing. Photography is a language, and like any language its what it means that counts, so similarity is a good thing, it worked for Monet, it worked for Shakespeare, it works for Gilden.

Steve
 
250swb said:
similarity is a good thing [...] it worked for Shakespeare [...]
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Because Much Ado About Nothing, Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, and Cymberline are all so similar?

I suppose they were all written in 17th century English.

...Mike
 
Yes, he often photographes people's reaction to him jumping into their faces. He even scares many, as he jumps out of nothing, openarmed and fires a flash in their eyes. Only their dentist could take pictures closer up than Bruce does.

Pretty understandably, most of his street subjects seem to dislike his ways and think "asshole". Some even seem to consider turning back and confronting him. Very few, like the girl in the other video, get pissed off. Same happens to Eric Kim, who pretty much shoots the same way as Bruce. In another video from Oxford Street Bruce does admit having had a few fights, by the way. Both he and Eric Kim seem reasonably willing to delete a pix or be humble to avoid the fight, and are still alive though.

Still, he did find his style and gets exactly what he wants, which many of us never do quite completely. And while many of the streets photos he gets in these videoclips are relatively ordinary stuff, some a very interesting to me.
 
I just wonder what people think of him being a magnum photographer... I mean people say his work sucks and is overrated, yet he still is a member? I wish I sucked that bad.
 
Okay so far I didnt really know what you guys are talking about in this thread. But this clip just made it clear, what a prick!

Eric Kim has no balls either, he is just a copycat getting on peoples nerves... His images are about as crappy as his attitude.
At least he deletes the pic after he got some trouble. Gilden alsmost slaps his female victim...unbelievable




chambrenoire said:
You can see Bruce getting hit by a woman here
http://www.americansuburbx.com/2011/07/asx-tv-bruce-gilden-everybody-street-2011.html
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jsrockit said:
I just wonder what people think of him being a magnum photographer... I mean people say his work sucks and is overrated, yet he still is a member? I wish I sucked that bad.
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No doubt that his manners when taking street photos would hurt most people's nerves. But I suspect Magnum are more interested in skills that guarantee consistently good images and stories when on assignment, than they are in a photographer's good manners or lack thereof. For one, I kind of like his photos, though am not a fan of flash.

And as someone (Bob?) pointed out, his really good stuff, probably the one that gives him a place in Magnum, isn't what we see in those videoclips..
 
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