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Coney Island

Sitting on the outskirts of the five boroughs, the world famous pleasure beach of Coney Island has been the summer destination for New Yorkers since its heyday in the 1890s. Towards the end of the 1960s, one year after he first picked up a camera, Bruce Gilden took the subway train through Brooklyn to capture the sunbathers, the weekenders, the sideshow booths and the Cyclone rollercoaster. Coney Island's reputation has steadily slipped since Gilden started to photograph there, and is now known as a place where the poor who cannot escape the summer city heat go for thrills. Regardless of this reputation, Gilden's ability to eke out the characters and eccentricities give the beach and its surrounding neighborhood a humorous view of daily life from the sixties through until the late 1980s.

Bruce Gilden's childhood in Brooklyn endowed him with a keen eye for observing urban behaviors and customs. He studied sociology, but his interest in photography grew when he saw Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow-Up, after which he began taking night classes in photography at the New York School of Visual Arts.

Gilden's curiosity about strong characters and individual peculiarities has been present from the beginning of his career. His first major project, which he worked on until 1986, focused on Coney Island, and on the intimacy of the sensual, fat or skinny bodies sprawled across the legendary New York beach. During these early years Gilden also photographed in New Orleans during its famous Mardi Gras festival. Then, in 1984, he began to work in Haiti, following his fascination with voodoo places, rites and beliefs there; his book Haiti was published in 1996. In June 1998 Gilden joined Magnum.