GUCCI ART BOOK BY BRUCE GILDEN
Shot in Rome, right before the pandemic hit Italy as hard as it did, American photographer Bruce Gilden focused on the city’s many different faces, as a result of Alessandro Michele’s creative vision that lead to the publication Beaten & Blown by the Wind, Gucci’s latest limited-edition art book. Together with the street portraits, the book features imagery of the Pre-Fall 2020 Collection designed by Alessandro Michele. It is the striking expression of a special collaboration between the photographer and Gucci’s Creative Director.
“Bruce is a beautiful person with a poetic gaze on humanity,” says Alessandro Michele. “We share the same passion for faces and an obsession with expressions, personalities and looks. I am a great collector of portraits because the human figure is central to me. Working with a photographer means seeing through someone else’s eyes and it was wonderful to see through Bruce’s eyes. I felt like I was looking at things under a microscope in a science laboratory.”
“I had never made a book in this way before, which I viewed as a photographic challenge, and the end result is a truly creative collaboration with Alessandro Michele,” says Bruce Gilden. “Having Rome as the backdrop was great, the city really inspires me – the beauty of the architecture and its age and watching how the Roman people move around their unique surroundings, as well as discovering the statues in the park high above Rome that mix with beautiful clouds, and the panorama of the city below… it all lent itself for some good pictures.”
In high contrast black and white, these images paint a picture of the city’s humanity in all its variety. Old and young, many wearing Gucci, this idiosyncratic cast of characters is portrayed in unforgiving close-up, and lit by harsh flash. Among those featured, along with citizens of Rome, are Italian musician Achille Lauro, Italian actress and model Benedetta Barzini, and American fashion model and advocate Bethann Hardison. “Rome and its people got to me in a good way; I would like to go back and shoot them more thoroughly. I could even imagine living there”, says Gilden.
Beaten & Blown by the Wind is distributed by the London-based independent publisher IDEA Books. It will also be available at Gucci Garden in Florence and the Gucci Wooster Bookstore in New York.
