Bruce Davidson: Subway

Product Information

His glowing skin tone seemed to match the chains around his neck, which James Agee would often refer to as ‘badges of being.

In 1980 he captured the vitality of the New York Metro s underworld that was later published in his book Subway and exhibited at the International Center for Photography in 1982.Bruce Davidson s "Subway" has become iconic for its juxtaposition of humanity against urban machinery. From the moving train above ground, we see glimpses of the city, and as the trains move into the tunnels, sterile fluorescent light reaches into the stony gloom, and we, trapped inside, all hang on together. The photographer’s descent into the city’s famed transit system followed a period of broader exploration in New York.

Davidson continues to create classic bodies of work from his 50-year career that have been extensively published in monographs and are included in all the major public and private fine art collections around the world. Davidson is also famous for "East 100th street" (Andrew Roth, The Book of 101 Books, page 196/197; Martin Parr, Gerry Badger, The Photobook, volume 1, page 18). In this third edition of what is now a classic of photographic literature, a sequence of 118 (including 25 previously unpublished) images transport the viewer through a landscape at times menacing, and at other times lyrical and soulful. Davidson learned technical nuances of photography from Al Cox, including lighting, printing, and dye transfer color. In 1986, Aperture first published Bruce Davidson’s Subway – a ground-breaking series that has garnered critical acclaim both as a document of a unique moment in the cultural fabric of New York City as well as for its phenomenal use of extremes of color and shadow set against flash-lit skin.Davidson's accompanying text tells the story behind the images, clarifying his method and dramatizing his obsession with the subway, its rhythms and its particular madness. From 1958 to 1961 he created such seminal bodies of work as The Dwarf, Brooklyn Gang, and the Freedom Rides. In this edition of classic photographic literature, a sequence of 118 images move the viewer through a landscape at times menacing, and at other times lyrical, soulful, and satiric. This edition adds forty unseen images to the original book, and includes a new introduction by Arthur Ollman of the Museum of Photographic Art in San Diego, and a foreword by Fred Braithwaite (aka Fab Five Freddy), the original graffiti artist. Forty years later I was told that this man, who was 20 at the time, became a prominent physical trainer.

The subway interior was defaced with a secret handwriting that covered the walls, windows, and maps. This photograph was taken as part of an ongoing series of color subway portraits in the early 1980s.He also carried quarters in his pockets to hand out to the people in the subways who often ask for money.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The images present the full gamut of New Yorkers, from weary straphangers and languorous ladies in summer dresses to stalking predators and homeless persons.

In 1958 he became a member of Magnum Photos, and in 1962 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to document the civil rights movement. We were all in the same boat and I was just expressing the everyday occurrences in the subway at that point in 1980.