|
 Quote:
"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 joined Magnum Photos in 1956 and became a full Member
in 1959.
American, b. 1933
Born in Oak Park, Illinois, Bruce Davidson won first prize in the
Kodak National High School Competition at the age of sixteen. He
went on to attend the Rochester Institute of Technology and Yale
University.
During military service in Paris, Davidson met Henri
Cartier-Bresson, one of the founders of Magnum Photos. In 1957 he
worked as a freelance photographer for Life, and in 1959 he became a
member of Magnum.
Davidson received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1962 to document the
Civil Rights Movement across the United States. In 1963 the Museum
of Modern Art in New York presented his work in a one-man show that
included powerful and historic images.
The first photography grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
was awarded to Davidson in 1966, and he spent the next two years
photographing one block in New York City: the resulting book, East
100th Street, presents his images of the inhabitants of a rundown
tenement block in Spanish Harlem.
Davidson extended his view of the city with Subway, which explored
the underground New York metro and its subterranean travellers, and
Central Park, a four-year encounter with the city's magnificent
green space, a convergence of humanity, nature and the city.
Davidson's film Living Off the Land received the Critics Award from
the American Film Festival.
Henry Geldzahler, the former Curator of Modern Art at the
Metropolitan Museum, New York, said, 'The ability to enter so
sympathetically into what seems superficially an alien environment
remains Bruce Davidson's sustained triumph; in his investigation he
becomes the friendly recorder of tenderness and tragedy.'
Davidson continues to live and work in New York City.
Education
Yale University
Rochester Institute of Technology
Awards
2007 Gold Medal Visual Arts Award – National Arts Club
2004 Lucie Award – Outstanding Achievement in Documentary
Photography
1998 Open Society Institute Individual Fellowship
1973 American Film Festival - First Prize in Fiction (Isaac Singer’s
Nightmare and
Mrs. Pupko’s Beard)
1969 Critics Award, the American Film Festival (for Living off the
Land)
1967 The first grant for photography from the National Endowment for
the Arts
1966 National Endowment for the Arts Grant for Photography
1962 Guggenheim Fellowship
1949 First prize in the Kodak National High School Competition
Exhibitions
2007 Time of Change: Civil Rights Photographs, 1961-65 and East
100th Street –
Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, France
2006 Subway – Rose Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, USA
2006 Bruce Davidson – Bulger Gallery, Toronto, Canada
2006 On the Street - Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago, USA
2005/06 Bruce Davidson - Atlas Gallery, London, UK
2005 Subway, Museum of the City of New York, USA
2004 Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Lower East Side, Mead Art Museum,
Amherst
College, Amherst, Ma, USA
2004 Subway - Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, USA
2003 East 100th Street 1966 – 1968, Photographic Center Northwest,
Seattle, USA
2003 Inside, Outside - Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, USA
2003 Retrospective - Robert Klein Gallery, New York, USA
2003 Time of Change: Civil Rights Photographs, 1961-65, ICP, New
York, USA
Rose Gallery, Santa Monica, Ca, USA
2003 Images From the Inside, Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, USA
1998/99 Brooklyn Gang, ICP, New York, New York, USA
1996/97 Bruce Davidson: American Photography, Edwynn Houk Gallery,
New York,
USA
1983 ICOP, New York, USA
1983 Musée Réattu, Arles, France
1983 Galerie Municipale du Chateau d'Eau, Toulouse, France
1979 Galerie FNAC, Montparnasse, Paris, France
1979 Bruce Davidson Photographs - Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
1970 East 100th Street - Museum of Modern Art, New York
1963 Bruce Davidson - Museum of Modern Art, New York
Collections
Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
Whitney Museum, New York, USA
Museum of the City of New York, New York, USA
International Center of Photography, New York, USA
New York Historical Society, New York, USA
National Gallery of Canada - Musée des Beaux-Arts du Canada, Ottawa,
Canada
The Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP), Chicago, USA
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, USA
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA
Books
2007 Circus, Steidl, Germany
2005 England / Scotland 1960, Steidl, Germany
2002 Time of Change, Civil Rights Photographs 1961-1965, St. Ann's
Press, USA
1999 Portraits, Aperture, USA
1998 Brooklyn Gang, Twin Palms, USA
1995 Central Park, Aperture, USA
1997 Photo Poche, Editions Nathan, France
1990 Bruce Davidson (Photofile), Thames & Hudson, UK
1986/03 Subway, Aperture, USA; St Ann's Press, USA
1986 Bruce Davidson, Pantheon/National Center of Photography, USA
1979 Bruce Davidson Photographs, Simon & Schuster, USA; (Bruce
Davidson
Photographs), Le Chêne, France
1973 Subsistence USA, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, USA
1970/03 East 100th Street, Harvard University Press, USA;
St. Ann's Press, USA
1966 The Negro American, Houghton, Mifflin, USA
1964 The Bridge, Harper and Row, USA
Films
1972 Living off the Land
1972 Isaac Singer's Nightmare and Mrs. Pupko's Beard |
