Bruce Gilden is as entertaining in conversation as he is while taking pictures. He speaks warmly of his special, uncompromising relationship with photography, and the incredible results of his uninhibited approach. “If I want to take a picture, that’s reason enough,” he says. “If you start asking yourself how someone is going to react, you’ll never get a good picture.”
Surprise, anger and complicity distort the faces he photographs. He crops his photos as he takes them.
“I never reframe, even if it’s difficult to get close enough, to jump right in people’s faces. If I were looking for certainty, I could give it up, but I’ll never get the same result.” This is a self-imposed constraint, true to his teenage temperament, his taste in bad boys inherited from a gangster father, and his need to challenge himself.
