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Laura's Picks
Laura Paterson | Consignment Director, Photographs, New York
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Bruce Davidson is one of my favorite photographers who I had the pleasure of meeting in person several times while working for Magnum Photos a few years ago. Selecting anything from such an extensive body of work in a career that has spanned 70 years, is difficult, but these three pictures resonate:
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Davidson, with his quintessentially American perspective, traveled to England and Scotland in 1960 to document what he found there — a rigidly class-conscious and largely introspective society that was struggling to come to terms with an optimistic and more egalitarian postwar zeitgeist. This wonderful image, of two formidable tweed clad nannies, battling the elements while dragging their monumental, tank-like "perambulators" behind them, would then have been a commonplace scene in the leafier enclaves of central London but must have seemed comically archaic to the young photographer.
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Over the course of two years (1966-1967), Davidson became a "fixture" on a crumbling block of East 100th Street in Harlem, getting to know the people who lived there and documenting their lives. His pictures from this series (which I would argue is his masterpiece) are astonishing; some poignant, others uplifting, but always thought-provoking. This wonderful image of a Hispanic father and his (?) baby is typical of the mood of these pictures, which, for the most part, illustrate a feeling of making the best of life in very difficult circumstances.
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Davidson experimented with color in his 1980 series of shots of the New York Subway, which, at that time, was for most people something to be risked only if there was no other alternative. Ridership was limited (at least in the more dangerous fringes of the city and its boroughs) to the working class, to youths hardened by life (as here), to the poor and the homeless. The cars, covered inside and out with graffiti, were the stuff of legend. Davidson once again fearlessly took his camera into this hellish, lawless no-man's land, capturing the anxiety and hopelessness of its inhabitants in glorious technicolor.
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Mya's Picks
Mya Adams | Cataloguer, Photographs, Dallas
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I have always been drawn to the use of reflections in art. They add a layer of dimension and a metaphysical presence to a work. Photographers often use reflections to insert themselves into the narrative—Ilse Bing did it, and Vivian Maier, too. But Bruce Davidson distinguishes himself from this approach by deliberately excluding his own image or the camera from the composition. In Pier, Brighton, England and Scotland, the man reflected in the mirror expands the viewer's perspective, revealing what lies behind the photographer. It's a subtle yet powerful layer that deepens the visual and conceptual complexity of the image.
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While much of photography is often associated with the staged or the studio—images that are carefully planned or composed—there remains an essential element of unpredictability that defines the medium. Sometimes, it's this spontaneity that transforms an ordinary street scene into a one-in-a-million image. In Pigeons, Paris (1962), Bruce Davidson captures such a moment: a chaotic burst of movement as pigeons swarm for food. What might have been dismissed as an accident (something easily deleted in the age of smartphones) becomes, in Davidson's hands, a vivid snapshot of Parisian life. It's a fleeting, universal moment that many have experienced, elevated here into something extraordinary.
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Laura Paterson
Consignment Director,
Photographs, New York
LauraP@HA.com
(212) 486-3525
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Mya Adams
Cataloguer,
Photographs, Dallas
MyaA@HA.com
(214) 409-1139
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