I first encountered Bruce Gilden's close-up portraits three years ago, as part of the Strange And Familiar exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery. The images on display - taken in the Black Country, following an invitation to continue his Faces project there - were undeniably striking, but also deeply discomforting.
The photographer would no doubt claim that his quite literally warts 'n' all portraits are an antidote to the airbrushed, filtered selfies of Instagram and Facebook (as Chris Klatell has, in an introduction to Gilden's book Face), but they also communicate an unsavoury fascination with the grotesque and a sneering superiority with regard to his subjects. As Sean O'Hagan put it in a review of the book for the Guardian, the images are "relentlessly cruel", dehumanising those depicted and thereby (ironically) failing to give a true, fair reflection of the people in front of the lens.
Compare Faces with the work of Mary Ellen Mark, gathered in a new three-volume collection called The Book Of Everything and celebrated in a recent Vogue article. Mark was "uncompromising" and "committed to the truth", in the words of Brenda Ann Kenneally - but, critically, she was also motivated by an ethics of care. Whatever their circumstances, fellow photographer Maggie Steber argues, her subjects were afforded respect. The picture that Steber selects, of a homeless family in their car, is shot with an evident empathy that ensures it recalls some of Dorothea Lange's famous images from the Great Depression.
Arlene Mejorado praises Mark's compositional skills and sense of timing, but claims that "the connection to the people in the picture is more important". Steber implicitly agrees, arguing that Mark was genuinely, fundamentally "concerned" with her subjects. Gilden, by contrast, seems to set out to inspire mere revulsion, and he does so by deliberately denying those he shoots their personal dignity - whether they've consented to being photographed or not.
(Thanks to Jim for the link.)
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