Bruce Davidson: Subway

Product Information

He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1962 to photograph what became a profound documentation of the Civil Rights Movement in America. The images include the full panoply of New Yorkers-from weary straphangers and languorous ladies in summer dresses to stalking predators and the homeless. The subway interior was defaced with a secret handwriting that covered the walls, windows, and maps. Subway" is Davidson's visceral take on the New York underground system of the 1980s complete with beleagured passengers, Guardian Angels, graffiti and a palpable, all-pervasive sense of fear.

If they hesitated, I would pull out my portfolio and show them my subway work; if they said no, it was no forever.He spent five years photographing the civil rights movement in America, following a group of freedom riders in the south (in 1961) through dangerous situations. Passengers on the platform looked at me, with my expensive camera around my neck, in a way that made me feel like a tourist—or a deranged person. 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.

He also carried quarters in his pockets to hand out to the people in the subways who often ask for money. Disrupting the closed off realm of riders who captured his eye was a central part of Davidson’s process: “if they said, ‘Yes’, it was yes; if they said, ‘No,’ then I knew it was no forever.

Each photograph in the Subway series captures a rare, short-lived moment in time within the history of socialization in the United States. As our being is exposed, we confront our mortality, contemplate our destiny, and experience both the beauty and the beast.

His mornings started with him packing his cameras, strobe light, lenses, filters, and accessories in a small canvas bag. This photograph was taken as part of an ongoing series of color subway portraits in the early 1980s. 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.Book is a first edition and dust jacket has a small rub and tear on the upper front corner, otherwise there is slight rubbing to the dust jacket.