A Beauty Catastrophe

New York City, the unique metropolis that Le Corbusier has called “a beautiful catastrophe,” is a natural home to Bruce Gilden. Since 1981, Gilden has been roaming the streets of the city, capturing its characters and eccentricities with his confrontational, highly energetic style and exuberant vision. In his new opus, A Beautiful Catastrophe, Magnum photographer Bruce Gilden celebrates a trademark style with abandon, firmly ensconcing him in the pantheon of New York City street poets.

Bruce Gilden, born in Brooklyn in 1946, attended Penn State University and took courses at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. A self-taught photographer, Gilden began to exhibit his photographic work in galleries as early as 1971 when he had his first one-man show. His photographs have been widely exhibited in museums and galleries all over the world and are included in many permanent collections, including MoMA and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia; the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; La Bibliotheque nationale de France, Paris; the Royal Photographic Society, Bath, England; and the National Gallery of Canada. In 2000, Bruce Gilden won his second New York Foundation for the Arts grant. In addition, Bruce Gilden was awarded a Japan Foundation Fellowship in 1999, the European Publishers Award for Photography in 1996, and a French Villa Medicis Hors-les-Murs grant in 1995. On three occasions he has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts photographer’s fellowship. His previous books include Coney Island (Trebruk, 2002), Go (Trebruk, 2002), After the Off (Dewi Lewis, 1999), Haiti (Dewi Lewis, 1997), and Facing New York (Cornerhouse, 1993). Bruce Gilden is a member of the legendary agency, Magnum Photos. He lives in New York City with his wife, Sophie, and daughter, Nina.