Bruce Davidson on Shooting in the NYC Subways

gdmcclintock said:
I found Davidson's Subway book disappointing, too slick, contrived and commercial, like the filter he used to remove the sickly subway light, portraits of characters not people.

Kehane's book is an honest portrayal of a city in crisis.
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yes. quite so on both counts.
 
Bruce exercised and took a Swiss army knife to the subway as if that would stave off some determined punk? Is he serious? If I felt that endangered, I'd be packing some chrome and it wouldn't be an M2.

Mazel Tov!
 
I'd love to see the Belmore shots.


Pablito said:
Yeah, I know Lisa too; great person.

This thread is a nostaliga trip: Belmore Cafeteria... I have all these shots of the cops negotiating with the hookers on B'way in the upper 20s shot from my loft window at 4 am... (sorry can't post images here). Used Kodacolor 1000 for this back when it came out...

BTW, Fort Apache the Bronx was a hugely controversial movie with lots of protests against it.

I worked a lot in the South Bronx and in Loisaida - East 4th between C & D...
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Jeez, this is a tough crowd! I've always loved Davidson's subway photos. He obviously wasn't the first person to take photographs on the subway, but his pictures are instantly recognizable -- the color, the flash, the wide angle lens, the framing, the choice of subject matter. That is not an easy thing to accomplish as a photographer. And he accomplished it without making his pictures gimmicky or bizarre. You never get the sense that he is indifferent or condescending to the people he's photographing. He isn't Martin Parr.

I also think it's easy in hindsight to pooh-pooh the difficulty of the project. Davidson wasn't taking a few pictures on the subway from time to time. He was riding around all day for weeks on end while lugging his camera equipment. That's how he captured so many interesting scenes. In the early 1980s, you too would have been apprehensive if, in essence, you worked full time in the subway system while carrying a load of heavy, expensive equipment.

On a final note, I had to chuckle at the idea that these photographs were taken with the mass market in mind. If only! Subway has been out of print for seven or eight years now and, as a result, the price of used copies of the book had skyrocketed. (I always regretted not buying a copy when it was last in print, which is why I'm so happy that the new edition has been published.) If Davidson took these pictures as a mass marketing scheme, he didn't follow through with the plan.
 
mercadow.jpg
 
Walter knows and predicts all.



The Dalai Lama goes to a pizza parlor and says "Make me One with Everything."

Hey, Pablito, how about some goat curry?
 
What a meaningless phrase! It reminds me of an old joke: "For what it is, it's fantastic! For what it isn't, it's a big, fat nothing!"

claacct said:
Every single photo of the subway series is a masterpiece to someone who knows what they're looking at... To the rest, well, the rest will remain the rest---unknown.
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It is great to smile at the end of any thread! Go Groucho!

Ben Marx (er, Marks)

BTW, there is a reprint of a boxed set of Davidson books ("Inside/Outside") that I got on sale a couple of months ago. Just amazing stuff.
 
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