Bruce DAVIDSON
Born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1933, Bruce Davidson won first prize in the Kodak National High School Competition at the age of 16. 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, and in 1958 became a full member (he is now a contributor). After leaving the military, he worked as a freelance photographer for Life, and from 1958 to 1961 created such seminal bodies of work as Circus, Brooklyn Gang, and Freedom Rides. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1962 and created a profound documentation of the civil rights movement in America, later published as Time of Change. In 1963, the Museum of Modern Art in New York presented his early work in a solo exhibition.
The first photography grant from the National Endowment for the Arts was awarded to Davidson in 1967. He spent two years witnessing the dire social conditions on one block in East Harlem and the resulting book, East 100th Street, was published by Harvard University Press in 1970. This work became an exhibition that same year at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, curated by John Szarkowski.
Davidson extended his view of the city in 1980 with Subway, which explored the New York underground and its subterranean travelers. His next project, Central Park, was a four-year encounter (1992–95) 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.
Publications
1978 - Bruce Davidson Photographs. Agrinde/Summit
1986 - Subway New York: Aperture
1991 - Portraits. New York: Aperture
1998 - Brooklyn Gang: Summer 1959. Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms
2010 - Outside Inside. Göttingen: Steidl
2012 - Black and White. Göttingen: Steidl
2014 - In Color. Göttingen: Steidl
2015 - Los Angeles 1964. Göttingen: Steidl
2015 - Nature of Los Angeles. Göttingen: Steidl
2016 - Survey. New York: Aperture; Madrid: Fundación Mapfre
2017 - Lesser Known. Göttingen: Steidl
Selected Solo Exhibitions
1965 - International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
1965 - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisc
1966 - Museum of Modern Art, New York City
1966 - Moderna Museet, Stockholm
1970 - East 100th Street: Photographs by Bruce Davidson; Museum of Modern Art, New York City
1971 - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
1976 - Addison Gallery, Andover, Massachusetts
1979 - FNAC Gallery, Paris
1979 - Galerie Delpire, Paris
1979 - Galerie Fiolet, Amsterdam
1982 - Douglas Kenyon Gallery, Chicago
1983 - New York Subway Color; International Center of Photography, New York City
1997 - Bruce Davidson: American Photographs; Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York City
1998 - Bruce Davidson: The Brooklyn Gang, 1959; International Center of Photography, New York City
2007 - Bruce Davidson: Time of Change. Aperture Gallery, New York City
2007 - Bruce Davidson: La Nature de Paris, Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris
2017 - Bruce Davidson WestLicht. Schauplatz für Fotografie, Vienna
2017/18 - Bruce Davidson: American Photographer Netherlands Photo Museum, Rotterdam
2018/19 - Bruce Davidson: Leica Hall of Fame 2018, Leica Galerie Milano
Selected Group Exhibitions
1960 - The World as Seen by Magnum; Takashimaya Department Store, Tokyo, Japan and traveling
1962 - Ideas in Images; American Federation of Arts, New York, New York, and traveling
1966 - Contemporary Photography Since 1950; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
1966 - Toward a Social Landscape: Contemporary Photographers; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
1967 - 12 Photographers of the American Social Landscape; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Boston, Massachusetts
1973 - The Concerned Photographer 2; Israel Museum, Jerusalem and traveling
1974 - Photography in America; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York
1977 - Concerning Photography; The Photographers’ Gallery, London, then Spectro Workshop, Newcastle upon Tyne, England
1980 - The Imaginary Photo Museum; Kunsthalle, Cologne, Germany
1982 - Color as Form: a history of color photography; International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
1985 - American Images 1945–1950; Barbican Art Gallery, London, and traveling
1986 - New York School, Photographs, 1935–1963, Part III; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
1989 - On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (traveled to Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California)
1991 - Appearances: Fashion Photography Since 1945; Victoria and Albert Museum, London
2000 - Reflections in a Glass Eye: Works from the International Center of Photography Collection; International Center of Photography, New York, New York
2012/13 - Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s, Barbican Centre, London
2014/15 - Au Cœur de l'Intime: Paris Champ & Hors Champ Photographies et Vidéos Contemporaines, Galerie des Bibliothèques de la Ville de Paris
2014/15 - Bruce Davidson and Paul Caponigro: Two American Photographers in Britain and Ireland, The Huntington, MaryLou and George Boone Gallery
2016 - An Ideal for Living: Photographing Class, Culture and Identity in Modern Britain Beetles+Huxley, London
Awards
1961 - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
1967 - National Endowment for the Arts Grant for Photography
1963 - Critics' Award, American Film Festival[vague] (Living Off the Land)
1973 - First Prize in Fiction, American Film Festival[vague] (Isaac Singer's Nightmare and Mrs. Pupko's Beard)
1982 - National Endowment for the Arts Grant
1998 - Open Society Institute, Individual Fellowship
2004 - Lucie Award, Outstanding Achievement in Documentary Photography
2007 - Gold Medal Visual Arts Award, National Arts Club
2011 - Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award at the 2011 Sony World Photography Awards
2018 - Infinity Award Life Time Achievement, the International Center of Photography
2021 - Royal Photographic Society Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship
Collections
Huntington Library, San Marino, California
International Center of Photography, New York
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, Louisiana
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP), Chicago, Illinois
National Gallery of Canada, Musée des Beaux-Arts du Canada, Ottawa
New-York Historical Society, New York
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Yale Center for British Art, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
