Seminal Street Photographer Bruce Gilden Captures Gucci’s Latest Collection

Last month, American photographer Bruce Gilden launched a new monograph, Lost and Found, which documents the destitute streets of 1970s New York; today, it has been announced he has photographed Gucci’s latest lookbook in Rome, starring Italian actress Benedetta Barzini and American model and activist Bethann Hardison, alongside an array of models.

The photographs showcase Alessandro Michele’s Pre-Fall 2020 collection, which continues where his Spring/Summer 2020 show in September left off – there, he married the “strange elegance” of Tom Ford’s stint at Gucci with a new, streamlined vision (“there were fewer things, so to speak,” he said at the time. “But can you say that a symphony is better than a piano solo?”). Here, this translates to sharply cut tailoring – in variously rich tones, from pink and red to lime green – and simple A-line gowns; prim belted overcoats, cocoon coats and kaftans, in vividly imagined prints evocative of the 1970s. Beneath, Michele’s usual subversive undercurrent: armour-like bodices, sheer monogrammed underwear (revealed by super-scoop-neck knitwear) and kinky black patent gloves continued the exploration of sex and liberation begun at the S/S20 show.

Gilden, who captures the collection in a Rome lesser-known to tourists – on the banks of the River Tiber, on bridges, train tracks and road sides – continues a line of big-name collaborators who have shot Michele’s lookbooks, including British photographer Martin Parr and cult filmmaker Harmony Korine. Gilden is primarily known as a street photographer with an empathetic approach to capturing society’s outsiders, a fascination which began while working as a taxi driver in New York.

“Streetwise, I think I’m as smart as anybody. I have a nose for it, like a sixth sense,” he told AnOthermag.com last month. “That’s my thing – I know what I can do and what I can’t do, and I think that’s the most important thing.”