Bio Bit: Bruce Davidson

Novelistic Ambition

"If I am looking for a story at all, it is in my relationship to the subject - the story that tells me, rather than that I tell." - Bruce Davidson

Throughout his photographic career, Bruce Davidson has attempted to show life in its many layers of complexity. From photos of the civil rights conflicts to showing gang members and circus outcasts, his passion had been to go into uncharted and uncared for places and share those stories with others. In the 1960s he was one of the first among a small group of other photographers who desired to show the ugly and the socially unwanted of the world (1). Unlike Diane Arbus, another such photographer of the time, his work does not glorify the dark and evil, only attempts to show it in an honest, unjudging light. In one of his pictures a young girl stands amid bustling London streets, unnoticed by the rest of the world. Her hair is cut short, pack slung over her shoulder and a fixed determined look in her face seems to say that she’s the only one she can trust in the world. In her hands, however, she holds a small, wriggling kitten, almost as if she’s hanging onto innocence itself amid her hard life. With many photos like this one, Bruce Davidson searches out the untold and forgotten of the world and gives voice to their stories through a picture. Ever since he was ten he has been on the hunt for the perfect circumstances that will line up to produce perfect images, as he says of his process, “I always felt that my best way with the camera was to stay longer, to get to know things, not for a picture story, per se, but for a series of images that are kind of like charcoals that catch fire and burn into each other” (1). 

Magnum Photos

Even as Davidson’s photographs became popular and accepted in the art world, he still had trouble meeting his monthly bills. To be able to provide for himself he would take photographic jobs for annual reports and various business publications. He preferred this work over fashion photography, which he had tried for some time with Vogue. Fashion was never able to hold his interest. He said that at least with business shoots, it allowed him to be out in the world and experience life. For him, he says, “All I cared about was ‘can I make enough money here to pay for my livelihood, so I can get back out on the streets and shoot what I want?’” (1) In his work, as well as in how he deals with his personal life, Bruce Davidson shows an innate understanding of what’s important and has value while still not downplaying the hard truths. As the critic Michael Brenson once said of his work in 1982, his type of realism shown in his photos is “almost novelistic in its multilayered ambition” (1). 

The New York Times

Bibliography

                (1.) Kennedy, Randy. "Like a Plant, His Roots Are Showing." The New York Times. The  New York Times, 07 Nov. 2009. Web. 21 Nov. 2014.