Bruce Gilden »

A Closer Look

8 May – 7 September 2025

Kunstfoyer

Thierschplatz im Lehel . München
T +49 (0)89-2160 2244
kunstfoyer@vkb.de
www.versicherungskammer-kulturstiftung.de
Daily 10am-6pm, Fri 10am-8pm

Peter, West Bromwich, Great Britain, 2014
© Bruce Gilden / Magnum Photos

Since 1995, the cultural commitment of the KUNSTFOYER exhibitions by the Versicherungskammer Bayern has been part of Munich's museum mile. The curatorial focus lies primarily on photography retrospectives and topics related to the world of film. After a short exhibition break (August 2024 – April 2025), the Kunstfoyer has moved from Maximilianstraße 53 to Thierschplatz 6 in Munich and continues to be a reliable venue for thought-provoking thematic exhibitions showcasing significant artistic positions. A former pizzeria has undergone a structural metamorphosis to become an exhibition space for everyone: the Kunstfoyer welcomes all visitors with socially relevant themes—free of charge. To date, around 100,000 people have visited the three exhibitions held each year, with over 300,000 digital visitors accessing our website in the same time span. We aim to build on this success with our future exhibition program.

New York City, USA, 1978
© Bruce Gilden / Magnum Photos

Starting May 8, 2025, we will adopt a transatlantic change of perspective in our newly designed city-center exhibition space: most recently, we showcased photographs and photo reportages by the 14 current female Magnum photographers. Now, also from the legendary Magnum agency, comes the world-renowned street photographer and portraitist Bruce Gilden. The exhibition was conceived by Isabel Siben in collaboration with Bruce Gilden: it presents 50 black-and-white street photographs taken since 1969 in locations such as Coney Island, New York City, Haiti, Japan, Ireland, London, and Paris. In addition, 22 large-scale portraits—so-called "faces"—are featured, unleashing monumental power in the space through their authenticity.

Bruce Gilden (*1946 in Brooklyn, New York) has spent the past 5½ decades roaming and working on the streets of countless cities—and has been an official Magnum photographer since 1998. From the beginning, he has directed his gaze toward the peripheries, the precarious realities that society prefers to overlook. For him, the subjects worthy of depiction are not stars, celebrities, or self-proclaimed influencers. He is interested in the "invisible," the "underdogs" and "misfits"—those living on the margins of society, often noticed only by street workers or emergency services. But Bruce Gilden is no moralist.

A catalog in the format of a "deck of cards" will be published to accompany the exhibition "Bruce Gilden. A closer look."

Bruce Gilden was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1946. After briefly studying sociology at Penn State University he quit college and decided to become a photographer in 1967. Aside from taking a few evening classes at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Gilden largely considers himself to be self-taught.

Although Gilden started his career photographing on the sidewalks of New York City where he grew up, he has since made significant bodies of work in Haiti, Japan, England, France, Ireland, India, and the USA. Along with his acclaimed personal projects, Gilden has worked on numerous commissions for clients including Louis Vuitton, RATP Parisian transportation system, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, Balenciaga, and on assignments for Vanity Fair, GQ, Vogue Homme and New York Times Magazine.

Gilden is the recipient of many awards and grants for his work, including several National Endowments for the Arts fellowships, the New York State Foundation for the Arts, Japan Foundation Artist Fellowship and in 2013 a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. Since the seventies, his work has been exhibited in museums and galleries all over the world.

Bruce Gilden has published more than 30 books of his work: From Facing New York in 1992, to Coney Island, GO, Face, Lost and Found, Cherry Blossom, Black Country, as well as most recently The Circuit and Haiti.

Gilden joined Magnum Photos in 1998. He lives in Beacon, New York.

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© 7 May 2025 photography now UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
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