BRUCE GILDEN

"HAITI-DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES"

January 16 - March 15, 1997
Menschel Gallery catalogue #47


Bruce Gilden has made sixteen trips to Haiti between 1984 and 1996 to produce the photographs in this exhibition. Geography wasn't the only difference between his previous work and the images he made in Haiti. For one, everyone in his photographs is Black, and he is not. Gilden doesn't wrestle much with questions of cultural voyeurism, dominance, and privilege that making these photographs might pose, because he felt completely comfortable in Haiti. That level of comfort is evident in his photographs where it extends across the picture plane inviting strangers to wear their emotions on their sleeve. In Haiti with his style of kibitz, grab, and snap photography Gilden became a participant in the public frenzy of human drama where dreams and nightmares are the substance of daily life.

In describing this duality Gilden states:

"From my initial sojourn to Haiti I have been drawn to the people's singular blend of passion and apathy, cruelty and fatalism, resilience and desperation. I've strived to capture with a single photograph an image so realistic as to be virtually surreal - a window to the dualism of a country rife with centuries of merciless despotism and unrest yet somehow powerless to unite against tyranny."