AT A GLANCE
- Known for
- Circus, Brooklyn Gang, Time of Change, East 100th Street and Subway
- Works in
- Black and white; color for Subway
- Camera
- Leicas for Brooklyn Gang; a 4x5 view camera with strobe for East 100th Street
- Also
- Magnum member since 1958; Guggenheim Fellowship 1962; first NEA photography grant 1967; also makes films
- Start with
- Subway (Aperture, 1986)
- Links
Bruce Davidson (born 1933) is an American photographer who joined Magnum Photos in 1958. He is known for long, close projects with people on the edges of society, from a circus clown and a Brooklyn gang to one block in East Harlem and the New York subway. He lives and works in New York City.
The story
One spring morning in 1958, Bruce Davidson walked into the back yard of the Clyde Beatty Circus at Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey. He was 24 and had no press pass. Behind the big tent, performers hung out laundry, ate and put on makeup. Then he noticed a dwarf clown in a tuxedo and top hat, holding a small bunch of paper flowers. “He was standing alone outside the tent smoking a cigarette,” Davidson remembered. He walked over and began to take pictures.
The clown was Jimmy Armstrong. “He seemed to know that it was the inner moment I was drawn to and not his clown face or physical appearance,” Davidson said. Jimmy let him into his private world and became his guide to circus life. “We became friends, although we seldom spoke to one another.”
Davidson had come a long way to that tent. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, he won first prize in the Kodak National High School Competition at 16. He studied at the Rochester Institute of Technology and at Yale. During military service near Paris he met Henri Cartier-Bresson, and in 1958 he joined Magnum. Sam Holmes, who ran Magnum's picture library and suggested the circus, wrote that Davidson was eager for a subject he could respond to personally and emotionally.
But leaving was hard. After a few weeks on the road, he said goodbye and gave Jimmy his Yashica 6x6 camera as a present. For a while Jimmy mailed him the circus route cards. In the end they lost track of each other. “It’s easier to get inside a world than it is to leave it,” Davidson once said.
So he kept working this way. The next year he spent spring and summer with a group of Brooklyn teenagers who called themselves the Jokers, shooting with his Leicas and black and white film. In 1961 he joined the Freedom Riders on a bus to Mississippi. Later he spent almost two years on one block of East 100th Street in Harlem.
In many of his circus pictures, Jimmy is alone, putting on makeup or waiting to go into the ring. Looking back, Davidson sees more than that in them. “I found something in Jimmy that was more than loneliness, it was a story about surviving,” he says.
The work
- 1933Born in Oak Park, Illinois
- 1958Photographs the Clyde Beatty Circus and joins Magnum Photos
- 1959Spends spring and summer with the Jokers for Brooklyn Gang
- 1961Rides with the Freedom Riders on a bus to Mississippi
- 1963Solo exhibition of his early work at the Museum of Modern Art, New York
- 1967Receives the first photography grant of the National Endowment for the Arts
- 1970Publishes East 100th Street; the work is shown at MoMA
- 1986Aperture publishes Subway
- 2025Steidl publishes The Way Back, a book of unseen photographs from 1957 to 1992
Lessons
Wait to be invited. Davidson stands to the side with respect until people let him in. Patience and stillness are part of making the picture.
Stay with one world. He toured with the circus for weeks and spent almost two years on one block in East Harlem.
Let your camera shape the relationship. On East 100th Street a big view camera on a tripod made him visible, so people could collaborate on their portraits.
Try this: choose one small world near you, like a club, a market or a sports team. Visit first without shooting. Come back often, and take pictures only when people invite you closer.
Gear
Davidson changed his tools to fit each project.
Yashica 6x6 camera: he owned one in 1958 and gave it to Jimmy Armstrong as a present when he left the circus.
Leica rangefinder: he photographed Brooklyn Gang in 1959 with his Leicas and black and white film.
4x5 view camera: for East 100th Street he carried a large-format camera, a tripod, a black cloth and a powerful strobe. He wrote that it gave a sense of dignity to the act of taking pictures.
In Subway, strong flash on skin against graffiti and dark tunnels became part of the look of the pictures.
Books
East 100th Street (Harvard University Press, 1970). The result of almost two years on a single block in East Harlem, then seen as the poorest block in New York. The large black and white portraits were made with a 4x5 view camera, and the people almost always look straight at the camera. The work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, curated by John Szarkowski. An expanded edition came out from St. Ann's Press in 2003, with a foreword by resident and activist Mildred Feliciano, who used the photographs with city agencies to help rebuild the community. A key book for anyone interested in respectful portraits.
Subway (Aperture, 1986). Davidson's color study of the New York subway around 1980: tired passengers, Guardian Angels, graffiti and a constant feeling of danger, lit by strong flash. His own text tells the story behind the pictures and explains his method. Aperture's third edition (2011, 135 pages) has 118 photographs, 25 of them never published before. One of the classic photobooks about city life, and a good place to start.
Brooklyn Gang (Twin Palms, 1998). The first book of his 1959 photographs of the Jokers, a group of Brooklyn teenagers at Coney Island, on the boardwalk, in candy stores and on the subway. The pictures first appeared in Esquire in June 1960. The book has 71 photogravure plates, a text by Davidson and an interview by Emily Haas with gang member Bengie. A must for anyone who likes intimate, grainy black and white work about youth.
Circus (Steidl, 2007). Brings together his work from three circuses over about ten years: the Clyde Beatty Circus in New Jersey in 1958, Ringling Brothers in North Carolina in 1965 and an Irish one-ring circus in 1967. Most of the photographs were published here for the first time. At its heart is his portrait of the clown Jimmy Armstrong, to whom the book is dedicated. A gentle book about life behind the curtain.
In his words
“I stand to the side respectfully until I am invited in.”
“There is a lot of patience and stillness in the making of a photograph.”
“I think we cover up our loneliness with lipstick and a brand new car. I’m not trying to do that in my work. Somehow, loneliness reaches me.”
“I didn’t want to be the unobserved observer. I wanted to be with my subjects face to face and for them to collaborate in making the picture.”
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum id ligula porta felis euismod semper.