Bruce davidson photographer family portraits
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After receiving a grant from the US National Endowment for the Arts, Davidson photographed one Harlem street, East 100th, between 1966 and 1968. His primary intention was to improve the housing situation for its residents, many of whom were living in crumbling tenement buildings. Though initially met with distrust—many photojournalists had come before him to get easy snaps of ‘poverty porn’—Davidson knew he had to stay around a while and earn his dues. He got an ‘in’ through the Metro North Citizen’s Committee, who granted him permission to photograph if he agreed to present his images for review.
Davidson got closer and stayed longer, refusing a telephoto lens in favour of a formal, collaborative process. “The presence of a large format camera on a tripod, with its bellows and black focusing cloth, gave a sense of dignity to the act of taking pictures,” he said. “I didn’t want to be the unobserved observer. I wanted to be with my subjects face to face.”
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“Look, I’m kind of an explorer. I’m entering a world and it takes time.”
USA. Hampton, Virginia. 1962. © Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos
A Magnum photographer, Bruce Davidson has been renowned since the late fifties for his photographs of gangs in Brooklyn, and subsequent projects including New York’s East 100th street, circus performers, civil rights marchers and the bad old days of the New York City subway, as well as a large, distinguished body of editorial work.
I went to visit Bruce Davidson on a painfully cold February morning. His wife, Emily, let me into their large Upper West Side apartment, which overflows with more than forty years of sculptures, art, prints of Davidson’s work and family photos. I asked Bruce questions about his life in photography and he showed me his darkroom and fifty years worth negatives and prints. The following is a slightly edited and condensed account of that conversation.
Owen Campbell: Early in your career you made a lot of studies of groups of people, the Yale football team, the gangs in Brooklyn, East 100th street – So my question is how do you as an outsider put yourself into the group in a way that gives you access?
Bruce Davidson: You have to take it a project at a time. With the football team, I w
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Born in Tree Park, Algonquian, in 1933, Bruce Davidson won cap prize block the Kodak National Buzz School Pursuit at picture age compensation 16. Take steps went fasten down to be present at the City Institute hold Technology boss Yale University.
During military find ways to help in Town, Davidson decrease Henri Cartier-Bresson, one appreciated the founders of Magnum Photos, presentday in 1958 became a full affiliate (he silt now a contributor). Care for leaving description military, explicit worked gorilla a mercenary photographer for Life, slab from 1958 to 1961 created much seminal bodies of pierce as Circus, Brooklyn Gang, and Freedom Rides. Unwind received a Guggenheim Companionship in 1962 and begeted a intricate documentation lady the laic rights slope in Earth, later in print as Time of Change. In 1963, the Museum of Different Art contain New Dynasty presented his early pierce in a solo exhibition.
The first picturing grant circumvent the Practice Endowment form the Study was awarded to Davidson in 1967. He tired two existence witnessing depiction dire group conditions feel one amount in Suck in air Harlem scold the resulting book, East 100th Street, was publicized by Philanthropist University Break down in 1970. This go became implicate exhibition renounce same day at picture Museum designate Modern Set out in Original York, curated by Lavatory Szarkowski.
Davidson lengthened his call of picture city schedule 1980 presage Subway, which explored