
NYC103226 © Bruce Gilden / MAGNUM Photos
Gilden makes no bones about his style. He’s brash and in-yer-face. It’s his visual brand.
He doesn’t change his brand. With his surprise tactics, Gilden makes fun of New Yorkers as much as Texan millionaires as much as Guantanamo soldiers. (Might he also employ subtler approaches than the video below suggests?)
And why should he change his visual brand? He’s worked hard at it and we have supported it his whole career.
On the front page of magnumphotos.com today are a few of his shots from the Haiti earthquake aftermath. Should Gilden have changed his approach for his 2010 Haiti portfolio?
No, I don’t think Gilden should change his style; I think Gilden should’ve just stayed away.
This is my own personal opinion and I am not interested in any crusade against Gilden’s assumed approach or ethics. I just didn’t want to let his work pass without saying that I find it quite uncomfortable. This project isn’t the sort of thing I want to look at.
GILDEN REPEATS TOWELL’S MISTAKE?
A couple of weeks ago John Sevigny had a serious pop at Larry Towell (also of Magnum) for “gratuitous, racist and disgusting” work. I posted it, the Click picked it up and there was a short discussion at Lightstalkers.
I see where Sevigny’s coming from but I also appreciate comments which add a bit more subtlety to the debate – namely that exposed breasts are not always to be sexualised or considered part of an unequal power dynamic. This is just imposing ones own sensitivity upon another culture. More problematic is the fact the bare-chested woman is unable to move from the hospital bed away from Towell’s directed lens. Anyway, I digress, Gilden’s Haiti work is the topic at issue.
The situation with Gilden is slightly different. I must pause here and state that Gilden has photographed Haiti many times before (1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1995); he has perhaps been as many as a dozen times? And yet, I feel as though Gilden’s images of victims (many amputees) in the MSF hospital are feeding the same distant disdain we reserve for drunk and bloodied hipsters in our faux-fashion magazines (Vice). Isn’t Gilden’s work going to get caught up in a visual culture that often replaces even slightly careful representation with the thrill of gore and body fluids?
I take issue with Gilden’s style as used in Haiti, now. To me personally, Gilden’s style mocks its subjects. I can’t get away from that. I would fully anticipate Gilden arguing (very well) just the opposite – that he cares deeply about different shapes, colours, countenances and circumstances of all the people at whom he launches his lens and flash.

NYC103269 © Bruce Gilden / MAGNUM Photos
After the MSF hospital Gilden goes on to make a typology of survivors’ structures and portraits of beggars, tent city dwellers and the mentally ill.
So, I want to ask. Do I have a point? Do you share my aversion to Gilden’s work in the aftermath of this natural disaster of a quarter-million fatalities?
Magnum has made a public commitment to funding work in Haiti, but should we maybe have hoped that the members had encouraged Gilden to perhaps sit this one out?
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March 29, 2010 at 8:28 pm
Jared Iorio
I don’t know, Pete.
I don’t know if Gilden’s work pulls at our emotions by the way the flash makes us realize that it is a photograph we’re viewing and not a scene — or if it’s knowledge of the how very close and obtrusive he gets that makes us feel like we know what it’s like to be on the other end of that technique — how much we’d hate it. It just seems a bit like projecting…
I guess I’d have to hear about one of the amputees objecting to the whole thing and him disregarding those objections to look at Gilden’s work in hospital beds any differently than Nachtwey’s. One may be more palatable than the other but is it really any different?
March 29, 2010 at 10:04 pm
petebrook
Jared. Thanks for the comment and I can’t disagree with you. Like I said, I just have a real aversion to Gilden’s work when used in situations arguably not appropriate. It appears brash and without complexity, but these are only my opinions.
March 29, 2010 at 10:33 pm
Jared Iorio
I don’t know if I’d say brash and without complexity, I had a similar first reaction as well.
I just wonder if “pure viewers” of photography (non-photographers) have the same reaction, not having the knowledge of the technique used.
March 29, 2010 at 10:38 pm
petebrook
I can’t say what other viewers think of Gilden’s photography or whether or not knowledge of his technique would change that. Knowing about Gilden’s approach and style I can only say that I think he perhaps shouldn’t be taking that to the bedside of people who just lost everything.
March 29, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Jared Iorio
Yeah, I mean, I don’t think I have the temperament to do it myself. I’d certainly try to err on the side of respect and kindness.
It’s just bothers me that JN gets away with his intrusion due to his track record of concern, hell, all documentary photographers only get away with their intrusions because of their concern. Gilden seems to have the track record of shooting Haiti over the years that should maybe get him the same leeway as the others, technique and demeanor aside.
March 30, 2010 at 8:33 am
Stan Banos
Perhaps I’d be better off not saying anything before I dash off to work… but these photographs seem curiously objective, almost dipassionate. A collection of consequences, both human and architectural.
A very distinct and differing approach from a man who has taken some of the most intimate, poetic and yes, sometimes disturbing images of Haiti’s everyday life before the earthquake.
March 30, 2010 at 9:42 am
petebrook
The following was emailed to me and permitted for posting. It was written by Robert Gumpert (http://takeapicturetellastory.com/) –
Before getting into a discussion of Bruce Gilden’s work let me touch first on John Sevigny’s piece on “the aging hippie” Larry Towell’s current Haiti work, including the woman on an operating table whose breasts are exposed.
Sevigny’s is wrong in his assessment of blame on this. And he is wrong with his focus on the woman’s breasts. He is right that these shots would probably not be published in the US. However he fails to say they most likely would not have been taken in 2010 America because of HIPPA regulations (US government health privacy regulations)
Sevigny is placing blame on the wrong end of the equation – Towell is doing his job. And while Towell undoubtedly did not ask the woman’s permission, he did not ‘sex her up’ or play to her exposure. The problem is the double standard that the American media and by extension much of the world media uses for depiction of itself and “others”. We see this all the time with faces of dead as well as photos of dead bodies.
It seems to me Towell does his work with sensitivity and that is a rare commodity in today’s “photojournalism” and “documentary” community.
As to Gilden’s Haiti work, which is much like most of his other work. Bruce Gilden’s work owes much to two NYC photographers. Weegee a newspaper photographer with the worst of tabloid newspaper tendencies but who in much of his work made a human connection with his subjects that sets him apart. Diane Arbus was a fashion/art photographer who the world mislabeled a documentarian. She produced raw intense work with little connection to its subject. There is little doubt that she used them to depict her own demons, common in art but not documentary work. Documentary does not have the self as its subject.
Gilden seems a mesh of the two but with more of Arbus’s detachment. He is mainstay in the new wave of faux documentary work where personal style is more important than content. Where you apply that style regardless of subject or circumstance. It works for today’s market place. It works when style fits the subject and it works because photographs have always been a bit ambiguous in what they depict. Show a photo of a defendant in court to a defense lawyer, prosecutor, social work, cop, jury member – each sees something different. In faux documentary’s focus on style, as in Gilden’s work we all pretty much get the same message from the image: life’s a freak show or some other form of strangeness.
Photographers tramping off to parachute into conflict and disaster zones is hardly new, the best of them, like Don McCullin, photographed the dead and dying, the sick and the naked – with and without their faces. But most importantly they did it while preserving what ever dignity and pride the people in front of the lens had. That is the difference between them and so many photographers now producing beautifully crafted images, more art than document, or simply contentless. It is the difference as well between Towell’s work and Gilden’s.
Bob.
March 30, 2010 at 10:35 am
Jared Iorio
Interesting take, but I’d have to disagree with a couple of points.
This notion that Gilden (but not Towell) stripped the Haitian subjects of their dignity is open to debate I think. There are quite a few images in the piece of smiling/laughing amputees. It hardly looks to me personally that he has made them into a “freak show.” But we all read images differently I guess.
Joni Karanka made a point about Gilden’s book on Haiti a few years back about how he “sort of trust(s) him in the way that he would show any bit of the world in the same fashion.” link
No massaging an image to tell a particular story. Just the same close flash, wide angle — what we take from that, well that’s on us. At least you know where it comes from.
April 4, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Michael Shaw
Hi Pete, I think I’m with Stan on this one (and I really appreciated you posting the Robert Gumpert quote). I found these photos quite honest and matter-of-fact. To the extent they seem “particularly naked,” I think it has much to do with the contrast with the dramatic and “sensational” editorial coverage.
November 6, 2010 at 6:37 am
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October 15, 2012 at 7:12 am
Armando Reach
In a way, Gilden’s style is a positive way to broach the difficult topic of Haiti’s earthquake aftermath. Viewing tragedy through the lens of art is probably the only way to bring the issue to many