Bruce Gilden

An exceptional and gritty portrait of Japan and its people by the renowned Magnum street photographer Bruce Gilden.

Cherry Blossom

hey, mister, throw me some beads!

Named for one of the most intellectually challenging board games in the world, played primarily in China, Japan, and Korea by players who use black-and-white stones to acquire territory, Go presents Bruce Gilden's photographic explorations of the darker side of Japan. In striking, full-page, black-and-white images, Gilden documents the brutal reality of a Japanese street. In-your-face pictures of Yakuza (mobsters), Bosozoku (members of biker gangs), and street people -- characters who are alternately intimidating, bloodied, tatooed, frightening, and disheveled -- are sporadically interspersed with manga cartoons for a revelatory glimpse at a Japan that looks nothing like its familiar image of calm, orderly, hyper-efficient perfection.

Sophie Darmaillacq

An iconic street photographer with a unique style, Bruce Gilden is defined by his exuberant pictures, and his original and direct manner of shooting the faces of passers-by with a flash. But how has his style evolved? When digging through his personal archives recently, Gilden unearthed hundreds of unseen contact prints and negatives taken by him in New York between 1978 and 1984, preceding those in his seminal collection Facing New York. From these thousands of original images - most of which are previously unpublished - Gilden has selected the eighty images that are reproduced here. Brimming with youthful energy, and all taken without the flash for which he is now famous, Gilden's photos celebrate all that New York City - at once familiar and exotic - had to offer. It is an exceptional study of a now-vanished era. In this extraordinary gallery of portraits, the compositions simmer with energy, bursting with the most diverse characters, as though Gilden intended to include within the frame everything that caught his eye. The images are accompanied by an interview with Gilden by Sophie Darmaillacq, in which Gilden explains for the first time how he developed his style from this early work, and gives details of the images and the stories behind them. In Lost and Found, we already perceive the guiding tropes of the work that was to make Bruce Gilden famous: sustained movement and tension, unrivalled spirit, and an instinctive and irreverent affection for his subjects - perfectly in cahoots with his city.

Bruce Gilden: Lost & Found

Hans-Michael Koetzle

A new entry in Photofile, an accessible and affordable photography series

Collector's Edition: packaged in a presentation case with a numbered contact sheet featuring Bruce Gilden's Yakuza, 1998. Each contact sheet is embossed with 'Magnum Photo Collections' on the white border, and hand-stamped with the photographer's copyright on the verso. Produced to the exacting demands of Magnum's own print room and with the approval of the individual photographers or estates involved, these contact sheets provide an exceptional insight into the creation of truly great photographs. This special and important photography book presents, for the first time, the very best contact sheets created by Magnum photographers. Contact sheets tell the truth behind a photograph. They unveil its process, and provide its back story. Was it the outcome of what a photographer had in mind from the outset? Did it emerge from a diligently worked sequence, or was the right shot down to pure serendipity a matter of being in the right place at the right time? This landmark publication provides the reader with a depth of understanding and a critical analysis of the story behind a photograph, the process of editing it, and the places and ways in which the selected photographs were used. For anyone with a deep appreciation of photography and a desire to understand what goes into creating iconic work, Magnum Contact Sheets will be regarded as the definitive volume. With 435 illustrations in total, 230 in colour, including over 3,600 frames on 139 contact sheets.

Bruce Gilden

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