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Bruce Davidson
Youth with Coke Machine (from Brooklyn Gang)
Silver Gelatin Photograph
1959, printed later
11 x 14 inches
Signed in pencil on print verso.
Bruce Davidson
Brooklyn Gang; Group in the back of the bus
Silver Gelatin Photograph
1959
11 x 14 inches
Signed on verso.
Bruce Davidson
Boys Jiving on Boardwalk (from Brooklyn Gang)
Silver Gelatin Photograph
1959, printed later
16 x 20 inches
Signed in pencil on print verso.
Bruce Davidson
Dwarf; Dwarf with cigarette and flowers
Silver Gelatin Photograph
mid 1990's
11x14
Signed on verso.
Bruce Davidson
East 100th Street (teenage couples on stairwell and street)
Silver Gelatin Photograph
1966-68, printed later
14 x 11 inches
Signed in pencil on print verso.
Bruce Davidson
East 100th Street (children in window with view of alley)
Silver Gelatin Photograph
1966-68, printed later
11 x 14 inches
Signed in pencil on print verso.
Bruce Davidson
Brooklyn Gang; Girl combing hair in mirror at Coney Island bath house
Silver Gelatin Photograph
1959
11 x 14 inches
Signed on verso.
Bruce Davidson
Black Americans (Girl with Doll)
Silver Gelatin Photograph
1962-1965, printed later
14 x 11 inches
Signed in pencil on print verso.
Bruce Davidson
Time of Change (Mrs. Blackman in cabin holding baby Felicia,
Trickum Forks, Alabama)
Silver Gelatin Photograph
1965, printed later
11 x 14 inches
Signed in pencil on print verso.
Bruce Davidson
Brooklyn Gang (stickball players)
Silver Gelatin Photograph
1959, printed later
20 x 16 inches
Signed in pencil on print verso.
Bruce Davidson
Girl with Kitten on London Street
Silver Gelatin Photograph
1959
14 x 11 inches
Signed on verso.
BRUCE DAVIDSON
Bruce Davidson began taking photographs at the age of ten in Oak Park, Illinois. While attending Rochester Institute of Technology and Yale University, he continued to further his knowledge and develop his passion. He was later drafted into the army and stationed near Paris. There he met Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the founders of the renowned cooperative photography agency, Magnum Photos. When he left military service in 1957, Davidson worked as a freelance photographer for LIFE magazine and in 1958 became a full member of Magnum. From 1958 to 1961 he created such seminal bodies of work as “The Dwarf,” Brooklyn Gang,” and “Freedom Rides.” He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1962 and created a profound documentation of the civil rights movement in America. In 1963, the Museum of Modern Art in New York presented his early work in a solo show.
In 1967, he received the first grant for photography from the National Endowment for the Arts, having spent two years witnessing the dire social conditions on one block in East Harlem. The work became an exhibition that same year at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1980, he captured the vitality of the New York Metro’s underworld that was later published in a book, “Subway,” and exhibited at the International Center for Photography in 1982. From 1991-95 he photographed the landscape and layers of life in Central Park. In 2006, he completed a series of photographs titled “The Nature of Paris,” many of which have been shown and acquired by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Davidson received an Open Society Institute Individual Fellowship in 1998 to return to East 100th Street. His awards include the Lucie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Documentary Photography in 2004 and a Gold Medal Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Arts Club in 2007. Classic bodies of work from his 50-year career have been extensively published in monographs and are included in many major public and private fine art collections around the world. He continues to photograph and produce new bodies of work.
Bruce Davidson gained notoriety in humanistic documentary photography in 1959 when he created a series depicting a Brooklyn youth gang who called themselves The Jokers. Brooklyn Gang stands as one of the first in-depth photographic records of rebellious postwar youth...
