Research Prior to next Exercise – Mr Bruce Gilden
My next exercise, Close and involved, will be both interesting and demanding. I have to take a series of images with the focal length set to approx. 28mm. This will have the effect of putting the viewer right inside the situation that I have captured. As the notes say, from the point of comfort and confidence this is a challenging way to shoot.
I decided to do some research and see how others had undertaken similar work. I found a number of different images taken by both professional photographers and other students. As I continued my research I came across a very interesting photographer called Bruce Gilden.
Mr Gilden is a Magnum Photographer who , after reading a lot of stories about him and looking at his images , not only gets right into his subjects faces but fires a flash at them.
Reading various stories of him he was described in a number of ways , some of them very rude.
I read blogs and internet forums about him and looked at his work. Various people said that he was probably more famous for his methods rather than his images.
But these street images are only part of his work . The results of his “in your face flash” images are in some cases quite frightening. The subjects look scared and after watching him in action you can see why.
He said in one particular interview that he gave that if you can smell the street in the picture , then it’s a good street photograph.
Here are a few examples of his work.
Mr Gilden has taken photographs all over the world including in the UK. AS part of a project he was asked to take a series of images in Derby. The project was reported in the British Journal of Photography (May 2011.).
I purchased the copy on-line and read both the reports and watched the video that came with it.
What I found very interesting was some of the comments that on-line readers posted.
“He is probably lucky to still be in one piece”
“Bruce Gilden is a paparazzi of the dispossessed and usually invisible. This creates more interesting and more difficult images to consume than the bland publicity (junkie fix) craving, flash and trash of the conventional paparazzi.”
The negative comments on here have reminded me of why I cancelled my bjp subscription. Self important and opinionated nobodies. Bruce is a magnum photographer and has been doing this type of work for a life time. What have you got to show apart from all your bitching? Nowt.
He really was in interesting man to read about. Many people said that he was a controversial man and I had mixed views about him until I saw a video of him chatting to a lady in Derby. He wanted to get an image of her and he spent ages just talking and putting her mind at rest. She left after giving her a hug, and he got the shot.
It really takes balls to do what he does and to get away with it in one piece.
I think that I will venture up to London again to capture the images I want for the exercise.