Bruce Gilden was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1946. When he was a child, Gilden spent hours gazing through his bedroom window studying the activity on the street below. He eventually studied sociology at Penn State University but quickly got bored. In 1968, after seeing Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow Up, he bought his first camera. His fascination with normal people on the street and the idea of visual spontaneity led him to his first long-term personal projects photographing in Coney Island and then to the Mardi Gras. Gilden routinely uses his camera's flash, alerting his subjects to his presence, unlike most street photographers. Gilden, who has done extended projects on New York, Haiti, France, Ireland, India and Japan, started exhibiting as early as 1971 and has since shown his work widely in museums and galleries all over the world.

More info on Bruce Gilden can be found at MagnumPhotos.com.