Using images out of context is one thing. Using images that are clearly exploitative as part of your marketing is something else.
Bruce Gilden is a controversial figure in the world of photography, a description that he almost certainly relishes as the notion of being “edgy” helps sell his art. He is renowned for his intrusive, exploitative style, firing a flash in the faces of unsuspecting people as they walk down the street. I’ve argued previously that, as much as these photos document moments of life, each image is a depiction of Gilden’s ego. Legally, he’s entitled; morally, he is obnoxious — something that the art world seems to love.
Later portrait work also leaned into controversy; a regional arts organization in the UK naively commissioned Gilden to shoot a series of images that proved to be so exploitative that no local galleries would exhibit it. Fellow Magnum photographer Martin Parr described the work as “tough but true”; he’s right, but he also forgot to mention crass, exploitative, and entirely void of empathy. Given that Gilden is famed for having once boasted “I have no ethics,” he would probably agree.
On social media last week, Leica marketed a masterclass with Bruce Gilden, using one of the photographer’s most notorious portraits to help sell the course. “Discover and define your photographic style,” reads the accompanying text, ignoring the fact that the image is of a vulnerable adult who was first exploited for art and profit and is now being used to sell a workshop that costs $2,000.
Exploiting Vulnerable People for Misery Porn
Philadelphia’s Kensington has built a reputation over the last couple of years, with one local media outlet describing it as the East Coast’s largest open-air drug market. As this article (paywall) notes, Kensington “is a failure of our health care system, our cities, and our drug enforcement policies on public display.” And for certain creators, it is also “a content farm, where they turn other people’s misery into engagement and profit.” To this day, there are livestreams of Kensington showing people suffering, with YouTube channels monetising voyeurism. If you wanted to photograph vulnerable adults clearly demonstrating diminished responsibility as part of an “art” project, this is exactly where you would go.
That, potentially, is what Bruce Gilden did back in 2023 in creating his portrait of Amber — the photograph that’s now being used to market his collaboration with Leica. Taking her portrait and parading it as art is exploitation; using her to sell a masterclass is disgraceful and Leica should be ashamed.
Art Should Challenge, But It Shouldn’t Exploit
Gilden’s portraits challenge viewers to confront uncomfortable aspects of modern society, but the style strips the subjects of their context and isolates them from their stories, presenting them as little more than surface. In discussing his portraits, Gilden explains that he "suffered emotionally, and it shows in these pictures,” but that’s not conveyed when these individuals are reduced to nothing more than an image. There’s no story, no depth, no empathy, and no humanity. And if that image is then selling a course that teaches you how to be equally exploitative as part of your search for clicks and validation, I’m not sure you can defend it.
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109 Comments
you are correct about Bil Brown being arrogant and delusional - he just feels attacked by this article and comments because he does the same by exploiting young women in BDSM spaces. He is so defensive of Leica cause he works for them, he just wishes he was on the level of Gilden who has no idea who Bil Brown is.
This guy Bil Browns frantic need to reply to anyone offering even mild criticism is telling. He’s not just a defensive Leica fanboy, he’s a Leica salesman, a small detail he conveniently omits while masquerading as some neutral voice of reason. And in an article that doesn’t even question Leica’s cameras or their prices, but parading “ambassadors” such as Bil Brown, his shilling becomes even more transparent.
Bil Brown is not not an active photographer, unless you count hanging around BDSM clubs snapping one-handed shots of women in bondage. He’ll occasionally free the other hand, not for composition, but to smear the last oily strand of hair off the lens before going home to draft yet another sanctimonious essay for his Instagram about “consent” and “empowering women to virtue signal how he’s totally not a creep and taking photos of nakes young women is just high-art.
I am not paid by Leica. I’ve paid for all my equipment. I am in the Leica gallery system. I am a friend of Bruce Gilden.
I am a photographer. You don’t have to like my work, or Bruce’s.
you claim yourself to be a Leica ‚ambassador‘ and i‘ve seen ads with you in. oh so what about culty speaking events and circlejerk ‚walks‘ you do for Leica, they don‘t pay you for that? do you do it just to get more credibility to focus your so called ‚gaze‘ on young women, who you refuse to cast through booking agencies and even call for s*x workers to contact you? gotcha.
I have never called myself a Leica ambassador, and I have never been paid for participation as an artist. You don’t understand how it works with artists in the gallery system.
I have done my Mylar show and PROTEST show with them. I have done Academie’s, walks, fragments toward the history photography, and the poetics of photography during the 100 event, but nothing like the work I am doing on my own.
Thank you for paying so much attention to my personal work. My friends and I thank you. It will certainly draw attention to the important message of co-authorship and more. Just like this whole discussion draws attention to Bruce’s wonderful work.
We love it! Thank you!
if you claim Leica has never paid you a cent (my point that you are omitting your associations still stands) then start shooting on other cameras and tag the companies to prove you are not cucked by them.
i actually don‘t even believe you can shoot anything that isn‘t on Leiica, isn‘t a woman and doesn‘t have a contrived fart sniffing caption.
why doesn‘t the great Bil Brown ever let his work talk for itself! Oh right because he’s a glorified party photographer except he’s never invited to any, so goes to fetish clubs to find vulnerable or intoxicated people.
Bruce doesn‘t know who you are.
My work already speaks for itself—I don’t need to swap cameras like a parlor trick to prove anything. Bruce knows me, and I don’t need your gossip or immaterial comments to validate my practice or my relationships.
And what I deliver with help from the women who are model-artists is exactly about this: the politics of looking, the ethics of consent, who owns the image (not just the photographer) and the soft censorship — or hard censorship of government interference—of those who’d rather caricature than confront what a photographer sees with their own eyes and frames with a camera.
your don’t let your work speak for itself when you have to write masturbatory essays everyday to justify your „gaze“
a photographer who uses a camera simply as a device wouldn’t call swapping brands a „parlor trick“ all you speak for is Leica products and your voyeuristic fetishes.
I’m not going to allow you to derail this post with your obsession with me any longer. I’ll get back to making work; you can get back to watching.
This ends here. We have both had our say.
you claim you don’t want to police opinions while tellingn me what you are not going to allow me to do on a public forum you started derailing by your projections.
by „work“ you mean writing your self-righteous rants on instagram and posting 100s stories a day (no exaggeration) cause you certainly aren’t getting any work as a photographer or taking any pictures at all, there’s only so many times you can repost your old work from decades ago.
just stop fooling people you are doing anything for women and defending Leica on here without disclosing you are working for them, whether they pay you or not - honestly it’s even more embarrassing if they aren’t.
women don’t need the permission from Bil Brown to feel comfortable posing nude, models just want to do their jobs and not get mansplained by you about art, if you respect their work then stop telling them that they have to do more than posing (without additional pay) to have agency. stop telling models that being a canvas for a photographer is undignified while equating them to s*x workers.
and in case you haven’t noticed, there are more forms of nudity than BDSM scenarios, stop trying to convince young women that that’s the way to gain respect and some unique experience only provided through Bil Brown.
The root of art is metaphor and that's what is lacking in his work. There is a gritty realism to the subject matter that cannot alone make it worthy of being considered art. Metaphor is a notoriously difficult topic but some of the best theories maintain that empathy is the root of metaphor. I always find it interesting that there is a lack of metaphor present in work done by people that also appear to lack empathy.
On the West Midlands photos, Gidlen proclaimed on one of the gentleman's photos that "he brought sunshine into his life" (by making those photos). Gilden doesn't really photograph the people but his own ego and it shows. He is really free to do what he wants, but to platform it as something to emulate (workshop) is worrying.
He’s a photographer that has a deep history and has been a MAGNUM fellow for decades. The workshop isn’t to emulate him. It is literally to find your own voice.
By someone who has clearly found their own.
this guy ‚Bil Brown’‘ above me commenting is a fraud, pay him no mind.
By someone who has clearly found out he‘s a pervert.
Show me your work, Kimberly. I would love to see it.
i bet you would love to see more, i‘m not exposing myself to a perv! sorry, next…
I don't know how Bruce approaches people when he photographs them, but his current work seems to require their cooperation. He's obviously not sneaking his photos. Does anyone here know how he does this? It matters. So if you don't know, then perhaps your opinions are askew from reality.
His photos are very hard to look at. When I see them, I see pain and suffering. And in the very hard reality of our global societies, that pain and suffering is quite pervasive.
Polite society prefers to avert their gaze, and vote for people who will do nothing to address the issues, or raise their taxes, to more effectively deal with the multi generational problems of poverty, mental and physical health issues, poor education, and substandard and unreliable housing problems. All of which are widespread if you're stuck in the poverty loop. They'd rather call in the National Guard and throw everyone who is suffering into a jail cell, and usually a privatized jail facility so they can make more money off of their investments in them.
You all make Bruce out to be a boogeyman, but in reality, the real monsters are those who control the levers of legislation and do nothing. He is merely shining a light on the problem. If you can't see beyond the surface of the print, then that's on you.
Life sucks for a lot of people. Look them in the eye, feel their pain. Maybe you'll be moved, maybe not. But your response says more about you than you may realize.
What Bruce does is hard, and it's important. Just as it was in the depression when Dorothea was out there.
And as far as work on the street, most of it is form overwhelming content. But some are out there showing a world that is often overlooked, and perhaps showing a more honest reflection of the society in which they live.
Thanks for looking a bit deeper. Agree.
I know how he does them. I’ve been with him. I just commented below.
Bil Brown is a fraud. Pay him no mind. I just commented below.
As someone who has walked with Bruce, in these situations with these particular portraits. I will give you my take.
First off, they consensual portraits. In areas where I’m sure that the OP would never shoot. These are not easy places to take street photos. These are not easy places to take photos at all because they’re often riddled with drug use, criminality, in general violence. I can’t speak to the commissions that Bruce has gotten because I haven’t been there for that.
Bruce came to Los Angeles after I had discussed an exchange that I had with the mayor of Culver City. The mayor of Culver City on his personal Twitter account had said that photographing the homeless should be made a criminal offense. I argued that for one and elected official shouldn’t be saying that at all because their role should be based on their vow to uphold the law and the freedom expressed by the first amendment. If he had a problem with anyone photographing anything then he should maybe look at how his office can clean up the problem. This is the root of the situation. As Charles Harbutt said, “ photography is the only art form (if it is an art form) we’re either the photographer or their camera have to be there.”
These images are made in the documentary tradition. You may not like the photographer. You may not like his personality or his perspective. But you can’t say that the images aren’t excellent work.
The Face Photos are made with a Leica S, often with assistant. Bruce asks for these photos. They have a specific crop. Specific lighting choice. Not his normal 28 mm lens on the M. But a 70 mm with close focus ticket exactly the same type of crop on each image.
Each one of these photos as I have seen in person are consensual photos. The people in the photos wait pause, hold their head in a specific way and Bruce gets the photo just like a portrait photographer Wood in every single case exactly the same or very similar crop. These photos are detailed you may see every single line in their face from being on the streets in the sun in the elements for many many many months years and in some cases decades.
Some of the subjects have been revisited, some have passed. You can’t come back to a person after a long period of time to photograph them again if you piss them off. Again, not sure why I need to reiterate this, but these are consensual photos with people that are down on their luck.
Bruce is friendly with them. Bruce isn’t giving them too much, as they will take it. In areas near shelters and other locations, he isn’t working with a government or a community group to make these photos. He is taking them in the documentary tradition as they are.
These are photos. Photos aren’t inherently one way or another politically. You don’t have to talk about them. You just show what’s there. I remember one photo that he took of a man with a suit on that. We have talked to over the week and a half that we walked the same streets on Skid Row. He was wearing a suit because he had to visit his parole officer. The reason he had a parole officer was that it wasn’t exactly smart and had been subjugated to incarceration by his relationship with a gang. He took a hit. The guy had my shoes on my suit, no socks. Bruce looked down and asked him to take his shoes off and lift up his pants. This exposed his ankle bracelet that would say that he was on this block at this moment so they could stay on the street and get food and whatever else he needed. The photo that was taken in 2022 of this black man, on Skid Row, in downtown Los Angeles, look like… something that our country is trying to avoid, or at least our current president.
A photo isn’t innately political, nor is it always ethical. A documentary photographer., an artist, doesn’t have to be either.
They just have to be there. See what they see. Do what they do. We don’t have to like it. It just has to be exactly what it is.
*ps, if you would like me to discuss why $2,000 for a MAGNUM photographer that is one of the most famous of a very infamous agency, who has been Vice President of the agency and has multiple books and installations across the globe is a fair rate (maybe too fair, when others charge upwards of $13,000 for “destination trips” that have zero actual influence on photography and have never contributed anything to the art form at all. I of course, can. But I think it becomes self evident.
If you don’t wanna take the workshop, don’t take the workshop. If you wanna talk about ethics, go right ahead. The fact that you’re even having this discussion at all means that whatever it is, he’s doing has impacted you. Thank him for showing you what you don’t want to do. Now do something that’s worth putting next to a body of work like Gilden‘s that shows your ethical perspective.
Good luck.
Thank you for this perspective. His body of work is incredible. He makes people uncomfortable, which is exactly what some of us want to do.
The situations are uncomfortable, so the photos will be. Is the OP going to take a walk in his shoes?
I don’t think so.
The fact that you think saying "Bruce put himself in danger in order to exploit these people" is a flex speaks volumes.
I would never say he exploits anyone.
That’s the difference here. Look deeper. I will quote Lydia Lunch here, “cancel me? I canceled you a long time ago.” His critique is of the viewer, not the subject.
Artists don’t need our permission.
good point! Bil Brown does the same by going to BDSM spaces to exploit young women, he fancies himself as someone who documents the underground and mansplaining consent, when he‘s just another old geezer with a camera.
it‘s funny he keeps yelling about MAGNUM agency, like that really means something and justifies the pricing - when he goes out of his way to NOT book any models from agencies and even asking s*x workers to DM him for pictures.
Bil Brown is a fraud, pervert and Leica salesman, do not trust his opinion.
"he isn’t working with a government or a community group to make these photos."
No outreach organization would ever collaborate with a photographer to produce this work. Why do you think that is?
Agendas. Same reason Magnum photographers do the work then sell it, or commisions with no constraint. It’s subjective and exactly as the artist sees it.
Someone mentioned the Midlands book and its controversy. They were trying to hide aspects of rh town, sex workers and the overworked working class. Make it look “polished” — that’s not what he saw. He saw through that facade.
Remember, you can’t take a photo of something that isn’t actually there. Maybe what you don’t like is something you would walk past, but when it is glaringly in your face in clear, high resolution detail, vibrant color, you find it offensive.
That’s on you.
*edit. I can think of another MAGNUM photographer who has thier commission pulled from a city. W Eugene Smith and Pittsburg. He saw something the Carnegie city didn’t want see — how the working class were exploited. He showed it in horrific detail. Don’t you think your critique might be missing something?
The suggestion that community groups and local organisations try to hide marginalised people is laughable.
Oh really?
To say community groups don’t hide marginalized people is denial. Here in Los Angeles, the entire Echo Park Lake encampment was cleared under the banner of “public safety” — 200+ unhoused residents displaced overnight (HRW, 2024). In the UK, councils have pushed Travellers and Roma off land for decades, with laws now criminalising their very presence (Guardian, 2021). Asylum seekers are warehoused in remote hotels, hidden from public life (FT, 2023).
Erasure isn’t “laughable.” It’s often policy.
When you have billions of dollars at stake that goes to collective groups of nonprofits that simply have to do one thing per week to keep getting that funding. There’s a lot of oversight that is missed misappropriation of funding, and the bottom line is people slipped through the cracks.
How do you point that out? How would you point that out? If you were a person that came from that background they grew up with the criminal father and a mother that had to make her living through sex work? Then you became a photographer. What would you look at? I’m of course, describing Bruce Gilden. But I could be describing Antonie D’Agata, the current fellow at the Nobel foundation gallery who grew up in a part Marseilles France where his playground was where sex workers were buried.
These people‘s work doesn’t have to appeal to your idea of what is appropriate, or exploitative. They’ve addressed this for decades they don’t even have to.. this is the way that you were seeing this images not the way that these images were made or presented. You’re being a social gatekeeper., without digging in a deeper than a few paragraphs on a blog for photographers about the deeper issues. Like why did this photograph even exist?
Because the people exist. Exactly as they are no retouching needed.
it‘s funny Bil Brown keeps yelling about MAGNUM agency, like that really means something to him and justifies the pricing - when he goes out of his way to NOT book any models from agencies and even asking s*x workers to DM him for pictures.
This person called „Bil Brown“ manically replying to anyones comment here even suggesting fair criticism is a complete fraud and actual salesman for Leica, an important detail he’s conveniently leaving out while even shilling for company in an article that doesn‘t even critisize the cameras or their prices themselves, but Leicas questionable marketing and educational moves, such as hiring so called „ambassadors“ like Bil Brown.
Does Leica sell courses for 2k cause they pay the salespeople like Bil Brown enough to cuck for cameras in their free time? which Bil Brown has plenty of by the way, since he‘s not even actively working as a photographer and just lurks around BDSM clubs to take one-handed photos of young women in bondage, just occasionally freeing one hand to wipe his last greasy strandy of hair off the lens, then goes home and writes preachy posts about „consent“ and „empowering women“. He‘s currently trying to set up his own course to mansplain art to other Leica incels, hence why he feels so attacked by this article.
Interesting that you accuse me of hiding things while fabricating half-truths and insults to discredit me. I’ve published, exhibited, and taught for decades—my record is public. What’s actually at stake here isn’t Leica or me, but whether criticism is grounded in thought or in slander. If your ethics require caricaturing people to make a point, that says more about your argument than my practice.
Sounds like the “mean hearted” comments about Bruce and Leica are closer to a version of art censorship. A misalignment with work that actually has impact. Taking away an artists agency and pushing them to do work that aligns with a particular point-of-view.
Nothing I have said is rude or disrespectful.
And my workshop btw is by women (including trans women). I am adding history and context, and it has nothing to do with Leica. For instance, Bettie Page was dragged before the US Congress for ‘obscenity.’ That’s how soft censorship works—politicians, moralists, and critics weaponize ‘ethics’ to control what can be seen. We haven’t moved far: the same logic is at play whenever artists are accused of exploitation simply for showing what’s uncomfortable.
You can relate this directly to three comments about Bruce Gilden—his confrontational style has always provoked outrage, but the outrage often says more about the viewer’s denial than his practice. You calling me a “fraud” do you think I haven’t heard that before? Usually from people that have an agenda, that want my images to not exist. Who don’t want to see what I have seen or to show. That don’t want people like my subjects have their own agency and power.
I take this head-on: not to sanitize the gaze, but to interrogate. Are you saying who gets to look, who gets to be seen, and who tries to police the encounter the images.
I’m sorry, next…
these are no fabrications, i encrouage everyone to take a look at your instagram profile to see for themselves that your opinion can‘t be taken seriously. warning to anyone: you would have to scroll down a lot to actually see any of his work which is many years old. i‘m not warning anyone about the uncensored nudity, real blood and sexualized scenes of actual self-harm he promotes, because Bil taught me it‘s high-art and and everyone should trust a man with a camera bouncing off his santa clause gut.
so you don‘t even deny that you‘re a performative perv or gazing geezer. thanks for bringing up policing, since that also reminds me that you don‘t practice what you preach on your preachy instagram profile either and block people who even mildly disagree with anything. „are you saying who gets to look?“
your paranoia about censorship reminds me of the great Allen Ginsberg and his speeches to rationalize being an official member of NAMBLA:
„It's healthy and appropriate for the student and the teacher to have a love relationship whenever possible... I think it should be institutionally encouraged... My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.“
i am sorry you were already too old to truly be touched by genius.
Your Insults aren’t a critique—if you can’t tell the difference, you’re proving exactly why we need workshops like this. Since you are apt to quote Allen, how is this one:
“Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.”
When critique collapses into body jokes and tabloid fantasy, it exposes more about the critic than the work. My record is public, my practice is transparent, and I don’t answer to you or anyone.
My workshop is about exactly this, as is my aesthetics: how images are policed and how moral panic gets weaponized to shut down art.
If you can’t tell the difference between critique and slander, maybe you’re not looking hard enough. You clearly are very obsessed with me…
Kimberly Stoddard wrote (about Bill Brown):
"you don‘t practice what you preach on your preachy instagram profile either and block people who even mildly disagree with anything ... are you saying who gets to look?"
Bill, can you please tell me if these accusations are true? Do you really block people on Instagram who criticize and slander you and put down what you stand for, or do you let them have a voice?
Tom, the Instagram algorithm doesn’t give me very many views, does it for you?
But to answer your question, I can only remember blocking one person in the last few years who I became friends with and was supportive of. When she started threatening my friends, and talking very bizarre things... And even then I don’t think I blocked her, I only restricted her account and stopped speaking to her.
She later moved on to attacking a friend and threatening his family. I think back on that, it was a hard thing to do to block anyone, but it was merited.
But even then, I wish her well. Clearly there is some mental health or trauma there and occasionally we all must move on. I hold no grudges.
I am perfectly capable of handling myself in critique.
Hey Bil
I am not sure what you mean by "views". Do you mean how many people see your posts there?
If that is what you mean, then I don't really know. I am very active on Instagram, but the reason I am there is not primarily to share my work. It is to stay in contact with other wildlife photographers, and to do deep research on various wildlife species and habitats throughout the U.S. I think it's been over a year since I posted anything.
In my opinion, Instagram offers things that are so much more important than having people see your work. And it is for those things that I use the platform.
I agree it is great for sharing with others in that way.
Bil Brown blocked me just because i have answered „no“ on a poll he posted on his instagram story asking if he should do his dubious workshop that hasn’t even happend yet in Paris - yes/no. i was blocked the same day without having ever commented or interacted with him in any way before.
Bil Brown just published a blog (bilbrown.substack.com) about this article and singling me out of all the commenters critiquing him and writing a whole section about me, including my name, even tho im not a public person and only chose to comment here with this audience and can delete if i choose so. Bil singling out a female model from the many (seemingnly male) commenters critiquing him and calling only me a troll is malicious and only proving my points that he is policing others speech and does not respect consent or protecting vulnerable people.
He’s also lying about not blocking me, it happend recently and his profile is still not visible to me, my instagram handle is the same as my name on here which he seems to be very aware of now - he couldn’t have overseen it on his blocking list unless he’s exposing himself for blocking that tons of people.
There is definitely something wrong with you.
The article you have written is nothing more than clickbait dressed up as moral outrage. You claim to be concerned about ethics, yet your entire piece is built on sensationalism and selective framing, which is exactly the same tactics you accuse Bruce Gilden of using. The irony is hard to miss.
Did you even click through to the link about the workshop you are criticizing?
The workshop is called “Be Yourself - A Masterclass with Bruce Gilden”. The stated goal is to help photographers develop their OWN points of view and clearly not a mission to create mini versions of Bruce Gilden. If you click through the Instagram post you are criticizing, you will in-fact see a self portrait of Bruce Gilden himself, created in the same style you attack him for. To me this is an indication that he does not see himself as separate from those he photographs and the fact that he allowed himself to be photographed in the same style is telling about his true intention and sprit in which he works.
Does Bruce Gilden have an ego? I’m sure he does, I’d argue it takes an ego and confidence to survive attacks from posts like yours and create a successful life in photography for more than 40 years. I’m sure for those that are prepared for the challenge, there is something to be learned from him, during this week-long workshop. You may have learned everything you needed to know, but for those who wish to go beyond your “5 tips for street photography” I’m pleased that Leica has provided an opportunity to work with Bruce Gilden.
To call out Bruce Gilden’s photographs as “Misery Porn” is clickbait at its best, congrats. Your mean spirited post does not properly represent his body of work. The failure to even acknowledge his body of work feels like a smear tactic, deliberate negligence or a lack of serious research. Either way, it is intellectually dishonest.
Who was he taking advantage of when documenting Republicans at their national convention for Vanity Fair, the Housing Crisis for Time, his shoot with Martin Scorsese or his fashion work for Gucci?
Gilden’s photographs matter precisely because they disturb, provoke, and strip away the veneer of comfort society hides behind. He makes us look at things in society, straight on and up close up. It’s not always comfortable to look at, but who are you to say he has no empathy. Some people like street photography, others back lit landscape images on postcards. To each, their own, but one is not morally superior to the other.
You have every right to share your dislike for Bruce Gilden style of Photography. But your criticism falls flat, when not fully researched. I’m sure attacking a brand like Leica and an influential artist like Bruce Gilden feels “edgy” and you will relish the attention it brings. But The real ego, I have to question is yours, Andy Day.
Calling yourself a “writer” when the majority of stories you have posted to F-stoppers are simply a couple of paragraphs with links to other people’s YouTube videos and reshares of other photographers content. This seems exploitive to me and hard to defend.
But maybe like you have with Bruce, I’m missing the full story and rushing to judgement of someone I don’t know.
Exactly!!!
Hey Bil,
Could you please clarify whether or not you actually blocked anyone on Instagram, specifically Kimberly Stoddard?
I checked my blocked accounts. Nope. Only bots and ad accounts.
I can’t find anyone named Kimberly Stoddard on IG that follows me or is blocked.
then why does your profile not show up anymore ever since i answered your poll? thanks for putting a target on me naming me on your blog btw, way to single out the one woman calling you out among the many critics you got on here, now go write another sanctimonious instagram post on how to give voices to women!
Kimberly, I assure you I tried to find you and I do not see you and you are not in the random 0 follower or bot accounts that send me spam that I have blocked. I would never block anyone for saying "no" to a silly poll. I just looked again. There are also no "Kimberly Stoddard" accounts that I can see that are models. Like at all.
And to be honest and not to trigger further flame-war like back and forth with you or anyone, I am trying to do a thing with the small community of people I have documented for a few years, they are not young as you say, many are in thier 30s and this is a lifestyle choice–I am very concerned with making sure that the people I work with have chosen a specific thing, I do not direct, I do not guide. It's not a workshop that I would do with anyone else and it's more of a way to keep a certain history alive. For instance the fact Bettie Page was called into Congress for Obscenity hearings, waited 12 hours and was told to go home because they didn't need to hear from a woman.
Trying to give something back to them and surround it with some history. SW isn't my focus, the group I work with is *by women for everyone* and they have graciously allowed me to be their photographer, and friend – not something someone would do that has any sort of nefarious intentions. It certainly isn't just me teaching, the whole point is that the photographers that want to come will be taught by the model-artists themselves how to shoot them. I'm there to give a little perspective but it's not my show and anyone can take it from here.
Also, you have mentioned various things about me not working with agencies. I do, not as often anymore as I left the commercial and editorial world around 2017-2019 in a slow leave. I've focused on personal projects and the occasional walk or talk or lecture. Leica has been gracious, but they can't be my only avenue.
I did not mean to target you, but you came onto this site, not as a photographer adding your account and to come specifically after me. The point here I would imagine is to speak about Bruce's work and the OP article, not me. I'm going to vehemently respond, as you do, or anyone if they are questioned or called names. You talk about my long rambling, I'm a writer, I've been and editor, and I am a photographer. I am going to respond in words, not just images. You decide to read them or not.
If you feel anything I have said here is "sanctimonious" I'm literally just being real with you. If you would like to talk further, we can do it publicly or you can chat with me. I'm open. I'm not mad, or upset. I get it. Sometimes people can be misunderstood online. Clearly.
Well that's great, Bil! Thank you for responding. Glad you are not the type of person who would block someone.