Mad Men Project By Bruce Gilden

Career
While studying sociology at Penn State, he saw Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blowup in 1968. Influenced by the film, he purchased his first camera and began taking night classes in photography at the School of Visual Arts of New York. Fascinated with normal people on the street and the idea of visual spontaneity, Gilden turned to a career in photography. He routinely uses a flash, alerting his subjects to his presence, unlike most street photographers. His first major project was documenting the sensuality of the bodies of the people at Coney Island.
A member of Magnum Photos since 1998, he shot images of Japan's Yakuza mobsters, the homeless, prostitutes, and members of bike gangs between 1995 and 2000. According to Gilden, he was fascinated by the duality and double lives of the individuals he photographed. Gilden is also the subject of Misery Loves Company: The Life and Death of Bruce Gilden, a documentary produced in 2007. He has also photographed rural Ireland and horseracing there, as well as voodoo rituals in Haiti.