Palermo Photography Workshop / 12-16 July 2021

Special Guest Tutor Bruce Gilden

Bruce Gilden was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1946. He studied sociology at Penn State University but didn’t complete the course. Although he briefly flirted with the idea of being an actor, Gilden decided to become a photographer in 1967 when he bought his first camera. He attended evening classes at the School of Visual Arts in New York, but largely considers himself to be self-taught.

Known for his graphic and often confrontational close-ups made using flash, Bruce Gilden’s images have a degree of intimacy and directness that have become a signature in his work. Though he cut his teeth on the sidewalks of New York City where he grew up, and in Coney Island, Brooklyn, he has since made significant bodies of work in Haiti, Japan, Moscow, France, Ireland and India. 

Bruce Gilden has received many awards and grants for his work, including  a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship in 2013.

Since the seventies, his work has been exhibited in museums and galleries all over the world, most recently in 2019 in the exhibition “This Land” at Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco, California.  

Gilden has published 22 monographs of his work to date. He joined Magnum Photos in 1998.