Bruce Gilden does not gently ask whether he may come closer.

He is already there.

Camera in one hand, flash in the other. Close on the street, sometimes almost inside someone’s personal space. One movement, one burst of light, and the face that was anonymous in the city a fraction of a second earlier is suddenly fully switched on.

Wrinkles. Scars. Suspicion. Fatigue. Pride.

No time to strike a pose.

I admire that.

Perhaps I am even a little jealous of it.

Not because I want to make his photographs. They are his. But because he can do something I cannot: walk straight up to someone and claim the moment without taking a detour.

I would already have reconsidered three times before raising my camera.

Am I disturbing them?

Do they even want this?

Am I close enough?

Or much too close?

Gilden does not seem to discuss those questions with himself first. He photographs and lets the answer emerge in the image.

That can feel hard. Uncomfortable at times. His approach invites debate, and rightly so. But anyone who sees only the collision may miss what truly interests him.

The person.

Not the polished version. Not the face arranged especially for the camera. He is looking for something that was given no time to hide.

In that respect, we may be more alike than our methods suggest.

I am not looking for a perfect face either.

I am looking for presence.

I simply take a different route.

Where Bruce closes the distance in a single step, I prefer to stay for a while. I talk. Look. Wait. I let someone get used to me and to the camera.

He catches the shock.
I wait for trust.

He almost kicks the door in.

I hold it open and hope someone chooses to come outside.

One is not braver, more honest or better than the other. They are two ways of approaching the same mystery: how much of a person can truly be caught in a single photograph?

Perhaps every photographer has a distance from which they can look honestly.

Bruce Gilden finds his less than a metre away, in the middle of the street, with a flash.

I usually find mine only when nobody is in a hurry anymore.

And sometimes, when I look at his photographs, I think:

I wish I dared to do that.

Not forever.

Perhaps for just one afternoon.

Simply to discover who appears when, instead of first holding the door open, I knock once as if I am already inside.