Bruce Davidson: Subway

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Bruce Davidson: Outsider on the Inside is organized by Benjamin Mendez, Exhibitions and Archives Fellow 2019 – 2020. Audio tour and interpretation by Amy Raffel, Ph.D., Andrew W. Mellon Interpretation Fellow. Thornton, Gene. (1982). The subway viewed ambivalently. (International Center of Photography, New York). The New York Times, p. H31. For example, he photographed for his “Circus” project for 4 months when traveling with them in 1958. For his “Brooklyn Gang” project, he photographed the group for an entire summer in 1959. After that, he photographed the Civil Rights Movement in the South for 4 years for his “Times of Change” book. For his “East 100th street” project, he photographed for 2 years. His “Subway” project took him an entire year riding the trains in NYC. His “Central Park” book took him four years. I don’t think overtly I was political. I didn’t think of my photography as propaganda. I thought of it as imagery, and capturing a mood. Or the atmosphere, or the climate around a given situation, which somehow I was drawn to…it was all about passion and how I was attracted to photography. I loved to take pictures.” It is easy to think that we cannot repeat the success of prolific photographers like Davidson. They seem so fearless, butwhen you read his own statementsabout this project, he does not sound much different than any of us would probably feel. He was just dedicated, self aware, and able to push through it. It is inspiring.

Gruber, Renate; Gruber, L. Fritz (1982), The imaginary photo museum: With 457 photographs from 1836 to the present (1st Americaned.), Harmony Books, ISBN 978-0-517-54844-8 Bruce Davidson". Westlicht Gallery. Archived from the original on 27 February 2019 . Retrieved 15 June 2017. Reflections in a Glass Eye: Works from the International Center of Photography Collection; International Center of Photography, New York, New York [79] Below is a list of resources I used to compile this article together. I highly encourage you to read the articles more in-depth:a b Lyons, Nathan; Davidson, Bruce, 1933–; George Eastman House (1967), Toward a social landscape, Horizon Press {{ citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list ( link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list ( link)

I feel just because we are street photographers doesn’t mean that we should always be hidden and stealth. Sometimes interacting with the people you photograph both makes you and them feel much more natural. Bruce Davidson’s most successful work to date is Subway, which includes photos from his exploration of New York City. He began this project in the spring of 1980 and only focused on the city’s subway system. Before beginning, Davidson helped write and produced the film Love Story, which was based on the novel Enemies. Currently at the age of 79, Davidson isn’t settling down. He is currently working on a project in Los Angeles – documenting the juxtaposition between nature and the city. Lessons Bruce Davidson can teach you about street photography

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I want to be discrete- so what I would do is go to a flower shop and take pictures of the owner of the flower shop – then I’d ask do you know anyone else in the street who would be interesting to photograph? Oh yeah we just delivered flowers to a 100-year old woman. So one thing leads to another – so you’re kind of like a reporter. So its like an anchor.” The subway interior was defaced with a secret handwriting that covered the walls, windows, and maps. I began to imagine that these signatures surrounding the passengers were ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Every now and then when I was looking at one of these cryptic messages, someone would come and sit in front of it, and I would feel as if the message had been decoded. I started to draw a connection between the Broadway Island, the neighborhood cafeteria and the pious scribe on the Lower East Side. The connection was the subway.” 6. How Davidson prepared himself for the “Subway” project: Davidson stated that to prepare himself for the task ahead. He started a crash diet, including a military fitness regime and early morning jogging in the park. He knew he had to train like an athlete to carry around his heavy equipment in the subway for hours each day. Also, just for precautionary measure, he wanted to be in good shape if something went wrong down there in the underground.

I find that young people tend to stop too soon. They mimic something they’ve seen, but they don’t stay long enough. If you’re going to photograph anything, you have to spend a long time with it so your subconscious has a chance to bubble to the surface.” It is this capturing of intimacy in a confined, often crowded space that unites the two series; it resonates through the work of later photographers such as Wolfgang Tillmans, who evoked the enforced intimacy of strangers on the London tube in a series in 2000, and Chris Marker, who from 2008 to 2010 caught the quiet poetry of the everyday in his photographs of travellers on the Paris metro. Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s, Barbican Centre, London, 13 Sep 2012 – 13 Jan 2013 [80]

Rather than defining what type of photography he does, he explains why he photos. He sees himself as a humanist by photographing “the human condition” as he finds it – rather than just to make interesting images.

Biography

I began to photograph the traffic islands that line Broadway. These oases of grass, trees, and earth surrounded by heavy city traffic have always interested me. I found myself photographing the lonely widows, vagrant winos, and solemn old men who line the benches on these concrete islands of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. This is where the question of ethics comes to play. Everyone has their own set of personal guidelines and ethics when it comes to street photography. Generally what I tend to avoid taking photographs of (without permission) is photographs of homeless people or people who may appear to be drug addicts or alcoholics. However this is not to say that I have never taken a photograph of a homeless person or someone I perceived to be a drug addict. There are also many photographs I have taken of “normal people” who didn’t want me to take their photograph that I have taken anyways. The brilliant flash, combined with fluorescent lighting, intense colors and Davidson’s probing vision, produced images that are dramatic and at times surreal.– Photo District News One of the things that Davidson despises is when curators, the public, or historians try to classify him into a “type of photographer”: