Dashwood Books signing for Face by Bruce Gilden

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Bruce Gilden’s latest book Face published by Dewi Lewis is a departure from his usual black-and-white guerilla-style street photography but no less confrontational. Working for the first time in digital color while dropping the stylized angled compositions that characterized his earlier work he records every detail of his subject’s faces framed to fill the page with every flaw revealed. Photographed across the U.S., England and Colombia these characters or “invisible people” as he puts it seem alternatively defiant or broken from within – either way they can’t be ignored.

“The basis of this project is to show people who are left behind,” Gilden said. “A lot of these people are invisible and people don’t want to look at them and if you don’t look at them how can you help them? When you pay attention to those who are usually ignored, it makes their day. That’s not why I do it. I’m not claiming to

be a humanitarian; I’m a photographer. I always photograph what’s interesting to me and it has always been people who are underdogs because I see myself as an underdog.”