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Davidson continues to work as an editorial photographer.
Davidson continues to work as an editorial photographer.

== Critical reception ==
Gary Sampson of The Cleveland Institute of Art lists Davidson alongside [[Danny Lyon]] and [[Diane Arbus]] as photographers who reacted to [[Robert Frank]]’s European perspective in ''The Americans'' with a ‘hip’ ‘insider’ investigation of US subcultures cast with a dark edginess. He points to [[Nathan Lyons]]’ characterisation of this trend as ‘social landscape’ in his curation of the 1966 George Eastman ''Toward a Social Landscape''.<ref>{{Citation | author1=Peres, Michael R | author2=ProQuest (Firm) | title=Focal encyclopedia of photography : digital imaging, theory and applications, history, and science | publication-date=2007 | publisher=Elsevier | edition=4th | isbn=978-0-08-047784-8 }}</ref>


== Awards ==
== Awards ==

Revision as of 05:06, 23 December 2018

Bruce L. Davidson
Born (1933-09-05) September 5, 1933 (age 91)
Oak Park, Illinois
OccupationPhotographer
Notable workBrooklyn Gang, The Dwarf, East 100th Street, Subway

Bruce L. Davidson (born September 5, 1933) is an American photographer. He has been a member of the Magnum Photos agency since 1958. His photographs, notably those taken in Harlem, New York City, have been widely exhibited and published. He is known for photographing communities usually hostile to outsiders.[1]

Early life and education

Davidson was born on September 5, 1933 in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, to a Jewish family of Polish origins. When he was 10, his mother built him a darkroom in their basement and Davidson began taking photographs.[2] Soon after, he approached a local photographer[3] who taught him the technical nuances of photography, in addition to lighting and printing skills. His artistic influences included Robert Frank, Eugene Smith, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.[4]

At 19, Davidson won his first national recognition for his photography, the 1952 Kodak National High School Photographic Award, for a picture of an owl.[5][6] From 1951, Davidson attended the Rochester Institute of Technology where he studied under Ralph Hattersley, and in 1955, continued in graduate studies at Yale University, studying philosophy, painting, and photography under graphic designer Herbert Matter, photographer and designer Alexey Brodovitch, and artist Josef Albers.[7] Davidson showed Albers a box of prints of alcoholics on Skid Row; Albers told him[citation needed] to throw out his "sentimental" work and join his class in drawing and color. For his college thesis, Davidson created a photo essay, ‘‘Tension in the Dressing Room,’’ his first to be published in Life, in the October 31, 1955 issue, documenting the emotions of Yale football players behind the scenes of the game.[8][3]

Military photographer

After one semester at Yale, Davidson was drafted into the US Army, where he served in the Signal Corps at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, attached to the post's photo pool. Initially, he was given routine photo assignments. An editor of the post's newspaper, recognizing his talents, asked that he be permanently assigned to the post newspaper. There, given a certain degree of autonomy[citation needed], he was allowed to further hone his talents.

The Army posted Davidson to Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe, just outside Paris and, in bohemian Montmartre, he photographed the widow of the impressionist painter Leon Fauché with her husband's paintings in an archetypal garret. She was a woman old enough to have known Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse and Paul Gauguin. Davidson's resultant photo essay Widow of Montmartre was published in Esquire in 1958. The series impressed Henri Cartier-Bresson who became a personal friend, and facilitated Davidson's induction into Magnum.[7]

Magnum

After his military service, in 1957, Davidson worked briefly as a freelance photographer[3].

In 1958, Davidson became an associate member of Magnum Photos and a full member a year later.[9] During the summer of 1959, through a social worker he made contact with homeless, troubled teenagers who called themselves ‘‘the Jokers’’ and photographing them over 11 months produced Brooklyn Gang[10][11][3]

Through the agency in 1961, he was assigned by The New York Times to cover the Freedom Riders in the South that led Davidson to undertake a documentary project on the Civil Rights movement for which in 1962, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.[12] Museum of Modern Art curator John Szarkowski included pictures from the project in a 1966 solo exhibition, and they were also included in The Negro American, a 1966 collection of essays on the status of African-Americans.[13]

From 1961 to 1965, Davidson chronicled the events and effects of the Civil Rights Movement around the country. In support of his project, Davidson received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1961, and the project was displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Upon the completion of his documentation of the Civil Rights Movement, Davidson received the first ever photography grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Davidson’s next project, published in 1970 as East 100th Street—a two-year documentation of a conspicuously poverty-stricken[14][15] block in East Harlem—is perhaps his most famous. Its series of Environmental portraits were shot on large format film with a view camera. Vicki Goldberg and Milton Kramer identify it as the first work of photojournalism to be presented as an art book.[2] The project was also displayed at the Museum of Modern Art. Davidson followed this with Subway, a classic portrayal of the New York City Subway system, in the late 1970s. Using color, Davidson documented a gritty and lively urban underworld. Over a decade later, in the early 1990s, Davidson completed a four-year exploration of Central Park in homage to New York City.

In 1998, Davidson returned to East 100th Street to document the revitalization, renewal and changes that occurred in the 30 years since he last documented it. For this visit, he presented a community slide show and received an Open Society Institute Individual Fellowship Award.

Filmmaker

Davidson has directed two award-winning short films, documentaries Living off the Land (1986)[16] Zoo Doctor (1971) and a drama Isaac Singer’s Nightmare and Mrs. Pupko’s Beard.

An image from his Brooklyn Gang series was used as the cover for Bob Dylan's 2009 album Together Through Life.

Davidson continues to work as an editorial photographer.

Critical reception

Gary Sampson of The Cleveland Institute of Art lists Davidson alongside Danny Lyon and Diane Arbus as photographers who reacted to Robert Frank’s European perspective in The Americans with a ‘hip’ ‘insider’ investigation of US subcultures cast with a dark edginess. He points to Nathan Lyons’ characterisation of this trend as ‘social landscape’ in his curation of the 1966 George Eastman Toward a Social Landscape.[17]

Awards

  • 2018 Infinity Award Life Time Achievement, the International Center of Photography,
  • 2011 Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award at the 2011 Sony World Photography Awards,
  • 2007 Gold Medal Visual Arts Award, National Arts Club,
  • 2004 Lucie Award, Outstanding Achievement in Documentary Photography,
  • 1998 Open Society Institute, Individual Fellowship,
  • 1982 National Endowment for the Arts Grant,
  • 1973 First Prize in Fiction, American Film Festival (Isaac Singer's Nightmare and Mrs. Pupko's Beard),
  • 1963 Critics' Award, American Film Festival (Living Off the Land),
  • 1967 National Endowment for the Arts Grant for Photography,
  • 1961 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship,
  • 1949 First Prize, Kodak National High School Competition, Animal Division.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

  • 1965 Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
  • 1965 International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
  • 1965 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
  • 1966 Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
  • 1966 Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
  • 1970 East 100th Street: Photographs by Bruce Davidson; Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
  • 1971 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
  • 1976 Addison Gallery, Andover, Massachusetts
  • 1979 FNAC Gallery, Paris, France
  • 1979 Galerie Delpire, Paris, France
  • 1979 Galerie Fiolet, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 1982 Douglas Kenyon Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
  • 1983 New York Subway Color; International Center of Photography, New York, New York
  • 1997 Bruce Davidson: American Photographs; Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York, New York
  • 1998 Bruce Davidson: The Brooklyn Gang, 1959; International Center of Photography, New York, New York

Group exhibitions

  • 1959 Photography at Mid Century; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
  • 1960 The World as Seen by Magnum; Takashimaya Department Store, Tokyo, Japan and traveling
  • 1962 Ideas in Images; American Federation of Arts, New York, New York, and traveling
  • 1966 Contemporary Photography Since 1950;George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
  • 1966 Toward a Social Landscape: Contemporary Photographers; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
  • 1967 12 Photographers of the American Social Landscape; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Boston, Massachusetts
  • 1973 The Concerned Photographer 2; Israel Museum, Jerusalem and traveling[18]
  • 1974 Photography in America; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York
  • 1977 Concerning Photography; The Photographers’ Gallery, London, then Spectro Workshop, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England.
  • 1980 The Imaginary Photo Museum; Kunsthalle, Cologne, Germany
  • 1982 Color as Form; International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
  • 1985 American Images 1945–1950; Barbican Art Gallery, London, England, and traveling
  • 1986 New York School, Photographs, 1935–1963, Part III; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
  • 1989 On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago,
  • Illinois (traveled to Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California)
  • 1991 Appearances: Fashion Photography Since 1945; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England
  • 2000 Reflections in a Glass Eye: Works from the International Center of Photography Collection; International Center of Photography, New York, New York

Publications

  • Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Lower Eastside: Photographs by Bruce Davidson. Softback ISBN 0-299-20624-6.
  • East 100th Street.
  • Bruce Davidson Photographs. Agrinde/Summit, 1978. Paperback ISBN 0-671-40068-1.
  • Subway.
  • Portraits. New York: Aperture, 1991. Hardback ISBN 0-89381-851-8.
  • Brooklyn Gang: Summer 1959. Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms, 1998. ISBN 978-0944092507.
  • England/Scotland 1960. Göttingen: Steidl, 2006. ISBN 3-86521-127-5.
  • Outside Inside. Göttingen: Steidl, 2010. ISBN 978-3-86521-908-4. A three-volume collection containing black and white photographs that spanned his career to date.[19]
  • Black and White. Göttingen: Steidl, 2012. ISBN 978-3869304328. A five-volume set comprising reprints of Circus (1958), Brooklyn Gang (1959), Time of Change (1961-1965), East 100th Street (1966-1968), and Central Park (1992-1995), some of them newly edited and expanded.
  • In Color. Göttingen: Steidl, 2014. ISBN 978-3869305646.
  • Survey. New York: Aperture; Madrid: Fundación Mapfre, 2016. ISBN 978-1-59711-377-9. With texts by Charlotte Cotton, Carlos Gollonet, Frits Gierstberg, and Francesco Zanot. Exhibition catalogue. Contains work from Brooklyn Gang, Subway, Central Park, East 100th Street and more recent Paris and Los Angeles landscapes.

See also

References

  1. ^ Davies, Lucy (19 September 2014). "Bruce Davidson: 'people didn't really know what a camera could do'". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 1 January 2015.
  2. ^ a b Goldberg, Vicki; Davidson, Bruce, 1933-, (photographer.) (2015), Bruce Davidson : an illustrated biography, Munich London New York Prestel, ISBN 978-3-7913-8135-0{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ a b c d Warren, Lynne; Warren, Lynn (2005), Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography, 3-Volume Set, Taylor and Francis, ISBN 978-0-203-94338-0
  4. ^ Mary Blume, Bruce Davidson's 'encounters with the invisible', The New York Times, February 28, 2007.
  5. ^ Caption 'First prize in the animal life classification was awarded to Bruce L. Davidson of Oak Park-River Forest (III.) High'. '1952 Kingpins in the World of Photography'. In The Glenville Torch Volume XXXIII—No. 1 Friday, October 10, 1952. GLENVILLE HIGH SCHOOL, CLEVELAND, OHIO
  6. ^ see also Jim Hughes' recollection at http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/09/my-summer-in-maine.html
  7. ^ a b Hughes, H. S. (2016). THE MAKING OF BRUCE DAVIDSON. PDN ; Photo District News, 36(7), 24.
  8. ^ 'A Dangerous Silence: A quiet team in a locker room is a threatening one on field. Photographed for LIFE by Bruce L. Davidson'. LIFE 31 Oct 1955, p.70-74, Vol. 39, No. 18, ISSN 0024-3019, Time Inc.
  9. ^ Miller, Russell (1997), Magnum : fifty years at the front line of history, Secker & Warburg, ISBN 978-0-436-20373-2
  10. ^ Tom, P. (1997). Bad Boys: Bruce Davidson's Gang Photographs and Outlaw Masculinity. Art Journal, 56(2), 69-74.
  11. ^ Edmonds, Lizzie (17 December 2013). "Love and life in 1950s Brooklyn: Arresting images of a teen gang as they come of age in their neighborhood". Daily Mail. Retrieved 1 January 2015.
  12. ^ Riboud, Marc; Capa, Cornell, (ed.); Edelson, Michael; Muzeʼon Yiśraʼel (Jerusalem); International Fund for Concerned Photography (1972), The Concerned photographer 2 : the photographs of Marc Riboud, Roman Vishniac, Bruce Davidson, Gordon Parks, Ernst Haas, Hiroshi Hamaya, Donald McCullin, W. Eugene Smith, Grossman Publishers, ISBN 978-0-670-23557-5 {{citation}}: |author2= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ^ Parsons, Talcott; Clark, Kenneth Bancroft, 1914- (1966), The Negro American, Houghton Mifflin{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  14. ^ Dehavenon, A. L. (1995). A retrospective on two and a half decades of East Harlem research. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 749(1), 137-151.
  15. ^ Stringfellow, W. (1978). Christianity, Poverty and the Practice of the Law. Cap. UL Rev., 8, 451.
  16. ^ Living off the Land (1986) Television documentary featuring Willy Royka and Emily Royka, Director: Bruce Davidson, Time-Life Broadcasting, Acacia Productions, Otmoor Productions, Producer J. Edward Milner, Series Editor: John Edginton, Associate Producer: Nikki Nagasiri
  17. ^ Peres, Michael R; ProQuest (Firm) (2007), Focal encyclopedia of photography : digital imaging, theory and applications, history, and science (4th ed.), Elsevier, ISBN 978-0-08-047784-8
  18. ^ Riboud, Marc; Capa, Cornell, (ed.); Edelson, Michael; Muzeʼon Yiśraʼel (Jerusalem); International Fund for Concerned Photography (1972), The Concerned photographer 2 : the photographs of Marc Riboud, Roman Vishniac, Bruce Davidson, Gordon Parks, Ernst Haas, Hiroshi Hamaya, Donald McCullin, W. Eugene Smith, Grossman Publishers, ISBN 978-0-670-23557-5 {{citation}}: |author2= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  19. ^ Sean O'Hagan, "Outside Inside by Bruce Davidson", The Guardian, 13 June 2010.
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