Unflinching portraits of people from the Midlands
- Text by Isaac Muk
- Photography by Bruce Gilden
Nearly a decade ago, in 2013, Bruce Gilden was strolling through the streets of Dudley, in the English West Midlands. Walking past a bookies, a Greggs bakery and a discount pound store, Gilden looked around attentively at passers-by, staring at the contours and wrinkles of their faces, searching for someone who could make the subject of a good photograph.
One man caught his eye, so he gently approached the man. Attempting to find some common ground, he asked: “Can you tell me what time the game is today?”
“Fuck off,” the man responded.
“A lot of the people that I photographed, or a certain portion, of the population is pretty angry,” recalls Gilden. “In some cases it’s almost that they’re angry at everybody and everything – they’ve been beaten down for so long.”
Factory worker, 2013
His recently published photobook Black Country is a collection of portraits and shots taken from the photographer’s two trips to the area that the book takes its name from. Beyond the aforementioned Dudley, Gilden visited the town centres, pubs and factories of Walsall and West Bromwich, taking unflinchingly up-close, ‘in-yer-face’ headshots that are blunt and unforgiving, but filled with humanity.
The idea to visit the often-overlooked area came after a conversation Gilden had with British photographer Martin Parr, who introduced him to Emma, the Director at Multistory, a West-Bromwich based community arts organisation, who would commission the project and introduce him to the area.
As a man who came from a blue-collar background, the industrial landscape and working-class population of the Black Country (its name deriving from the smoke and soot of ironworks and foundries in the 19th Century) struck a chord with him.
Dudley, 2013
Debbie, West Bromwich, 2014
He even ventured inside of these factories. “It was almost like being in Dickensian times. There was a fire on the ground, with molten steel or whatever the hell they do – I was amazed to see that; I was ecstatic,” he says. “I identify because I worked in factories, taking out scrap metal with my father.”
It’s these factory workers, labourers and other people residing on the margins of English society that Gilden was particularly interested in capturing shots of. “My father was a tough guy with a third-grade education, no books in the house,” says Gilden. “So I fit in with them, I know their language, I’m comfortable – and they’re generally comfortable with me.”
But it was also the people and the definition in their faces which formed the perfect subjects for his portraits. “I mean, look at these faces,” he says while pointing at the photographs, as his finger lands on a portrait of a man with a scar on his forehead. “It’s almost like a mask. It’s like if you were doing an archaeological dig and you came across a piece of human pottery.”
In the mall cafeteria, West Bromwich, 2013
Beat-up man, Wolverhampton, 2013
“Everything is a metaphor,” he adds. “I’m always photographing myself.”
This search for himself can be seen everywhere in his photography. The Black Country portraits were taken as a part of his Face series, which also includes the series Only God Can Judge Me, featuring portraits of women affected by homelessness, engaged in sex work and affected by drug addiction in a small town USA. While he sees his father in the men of the West Midlands, those women reminded him of his mother.
“When I started the Face project, I thought that people were left behind,” he explains. “But I started to realise that they’re not left behind – they’re invisible.”
West Bromwich, 2014
Black Country is available on Setanta Books
You might like
A stark, confronting window into the global cocaine trade
Sangre Blanca — Mads Nissen’s new book is a close-up look at various stages of the drug’s journey, from production to consumption, and the violence that follows wherever it goes.
Written by: Isaac Muk
“Like skating an amphitheatre”: 50 years of the South Bank skatepark, in photos
Skate 50 — A new exhibition celebrates half a century of British skateboarding’s spiritual centre. Noah Petersons traces the Undercroft’s history and enduring presence as one of the world’s most iconic spots.
Written by: Noah Petersons
“I didn’t care if I got sacked”: Sleazenation’s Scott King in conversation with Radge’s Meg McWilliams
Radgenation — For our 20th Anniversary Issue, Huck’s editor Josh Jones sits down with the legendary art director and the founder of a new magazine from England’s northeast to talk about taking risks, crafting singular covers and disrupting the middle class dominance of the creative industries.
Written by: Josh Jones
Free-spirited, otherworldly portraits of Mexico City’s queer youth
Birds — Pieter Henket’s new collaborative photobook creates a stage for CDMX’s LGBTQ+ community to express themselves without limitations, styling themselves with wild outfits that subvert gender and tradition.
Written by: Isaac Muk
The suave style and subtle codes of gay San Francisco in the ’70s
Seminal Works — Hal Fischer’s new photobook explores the photographer’s archive, in which he documented the street fashion and culture of the city post-Gay Liberation, and pre-AIDS pandemic.
Written by: Miss Rosen
The stripped, DIY experimentalism of SHOOT zine
Zine Scene — Conceived by photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya in the ’00s, the publication’s photos injected vulnerability into gay portraiture, and provided a window into the characters of the Brooklyn arts scene. A new photobook collates work made across its seven issues.
Written by: Miss Rosen
