Book Prologue
Steadfast Obsessions and Bold Innovations*
*Texts in the Davidson exhibition catalog
At the Hellenic-American Union in November 2007
When, exactly thirty years ago, I started getting involved in photography, I followed a friend's advice which stated that I needed to see a lot of good photography to learn. The first two albums I bought, starting a large library that reached four thousand volumes, were one by André Kertész and one by Bruce Davidson.
My exposure to what was considered good photography was initially limited to a booklet my father had brought home, a catalog from the major photographic exhibition "The Family of Man," organized in New York by Edward Steichen in the early 1950s. These photos, capable of impressing me as a child, seemed increasingly simplistic to me as I grew older and gained more knowledge, directly proportional to their melodramatic title. In contrast, those first two photographic albums I bought twenty years later had captivated me with the power of their imagery, beyond any melodramatic dimension of their subjects.
Since then and to this day, I remain an unwavering admirer of the mysterious and abstract power of the photographic image, despite all committed or conceptual interpretations. I rarely read forewords to books and fear captions, believing that both have the insidious power to pull me away from the interiority of the photographic image, even when they convey the photographer's own view, certainly more interesting than any interpreter's, but not necessarily correct. After all, the core of a work of art remains hermetically sealed even for its creator, and its external branches are not enough to lead to an authentic interpretation. Consequently, the two most functional ways to talk about one's art, without exposing oneself, are either through technical and anecdotal narratives or through a metaphorical, poetic language. Davidson fortunately always does the former and sometimes the latter. Years later, I realized that I had to be grateful to him as a then-aspiring photographer, among other things, for the fact that in that first album, the captions did not fall into the trap of over-information that exceeds the photograph's content. For the depicted, for example, elderly patrons of New York cafes, no caption informed us (fortunately) that they were former Auschwitz inmates. A piece of information that, while not arising from the photo, would likely have overwhelmed it if known.
I learned this detail years later from a very interesting article by one of my first photography seminar students, Glorý Rozaki, who obviously read the forewords more diligently than I did. Her article was published in our own small magazine, "Photochoros." We are very happy to republish that article today in this catalog, not only because of its undeniable completeness but also because it underscores a fact of great importance to me. I refer to the circles made by culture, art, education, and, hence, emotion: Davidson's book gave me the first insights into photography. My desire for communication made me a teacher. A student of mine, in her early photographic steps, learns from my lessons about this photographer and his work and is moved by the same photos that made me start. Fifteen years later, her article tries to entice and enlighten other unknown viewers, through the pages of a small magazine we published then. And today, fortunately, I can show the Athens audience some of the photographs that made me understand and love photography, especially with the photographer himself present. Therefore, republishing my student's article alongside my own has both substantial and symbolic value.
But to return to the beginning of my acquaintance with Bruce Davidson's work, I must note that with the purchase of those first books, along with my surprise and admiration, disagreements with friends and acquaintances immediately began. I then noticed something that continues to concern me, namely that the audience to which I showed the books was immediately swept away by the subject and neglected the photography. I found myself needing to defend the work of the great Kertész, which did not impress readers due to the apparent humility of its subjects, and to redefine the value of the also great Davidson, whose photos were captivating but for the wrong reasons. The troubled dwarf, the poor old woman, the funny nannies, the tender children stole the interest of an audience that had learned to see the photos as samples of a simplistic photo-romance and had not been trained to see them as fragments of a new, photographed world, the world of the photographer.
The motivation and driving force that lead a photographer to take a picture do not usually coincide with the substance of its content. To use the above example of the cafes, if it turned out that the depicted were not actually Auschwitz inmates, the image would collapse if its content was based solely on the identity of the people depicted. Therefore, for a photograph to be significant, the driving force must push the photographer to transcend the subject, that is, the very reason for it. Thus, the final result neither obliterates the original subject nor succumbs to it but is able to give it a broader, more abstract, and therefore more enduring and robust meaning.
However, there is another parameter that complicates matters. Photography, at least until the last decades of the last century, had no outlet other than its applied versions. For a contemporary of Bruce Davidson's youthful years, large magazines of varied or specialized content were the only exhibition space for photographs. The conditions, which they directly or indirectly imposed, even determined the way of photographing. The luxury that photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, André Kertész, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, or Roy De Carava had, namely to slowly build their photographic world, which became a subject in itself, was a rare but costly luxury. On the other hand, the ability to publish the photographs and compensate the photographers had its own price, namely the limitation of the photographic image to the framework of the subject it served. Removing the photograph from the magazine, publishing it in a book, and presenting it independently of accompanying and interpretive texts was already able to free the value of the photograph and give it its special significance. But again, the broad audience, accustomed to approaching photographs in the way that their use by the magazine press had taught them, could not easily detach from the emotional charge of the subject.
The public's inability to appreciate and understand good photography and its value found an ally in the efforts of some publishers and curators to emphasize the external thematic elements of the photographs and burden them with a populist humanism. I sadly remember a photographic collection, which included photos by Bruce Davidson, with the provocative and misleading title "The Concerned Photographers." The term was unacceptable and misleading in many respects. First of all, it offended all those photographers who had not chosen to deal with subjects of the marginalized, the poor, or the Third World. Therefore, those who photographed landscapes, portraits, middle-class people, shadows, or anything else were wholesale categorized as socially insensitive. On the other hand, it also offended the photographers presented in the collection, as their work was necessarily reduced to the specific category of social engagement. This term also seemed to forget that a photograph does not narrate but simply describes. Consequently, the obligatory social sensitivity imposed a series of interpretations on the depicted persons, due to the curator's arbitrariness in replacing what the photograph did not show.
But the sequel was no better. The course of the art of photography over the last twenty years, through the sirens of postmodernism and conceptualism, combined with the omnipotence of curators and art galleries, left little room for the flourishing of photographers who neither flirted with painting nor embraced social or political engagement. Logically, Bruce Davidson's work, to the extent that it does not fit into one of the above trends, should be treated as a historical relic. However, beyond and above the esteem one may have for his work, the overwhelming refutation of this reasoning is given not so much by the individual and undisputed value of his photographs as by his admirable career as a photographer.
I will not forget the joy and gratitude I felt when, several years ago, I discovered Bruce Davidson's book on "Central Park" during a trip to Italy. In the midst of an era of widespread confusion in the photographic space, an older and well-known photographer, who could rest on his established reputation and rely on his recognizable work, pulled a new rabbit out of his hat, challenging everything he had done so far while at the same time honoring it in the best way.
There are many photographers who have made several good photographs. There are many of Davidson's colleagues at the famous Magnum agency who have at times shown "social sensitivity," often clad in the most impressive photographic forms. But what distinguishes Bruce Davidson?
First, the absolute balance, the most fruitful dialogue, the most honest relationship between content and form. The latter never absorbed the former and, whenever it made its presence felt, became an integral part of it. Second, the courage to transcend his subject without ever ignoring it. The subject is present, but never absolutely given and never unambiguous. A journalist would struggle to invest Davidson's photographs with narratives. The image always eluded him. A hidden counterargument is ready to overturn any certainty. Third, his ability to remain faithful and at the same time always new in his choices and beliefs, in his subjects, in the people he places in front of his lens, in the way he uses and respects his camera. Fourth, the deep knowledge of technique, which (perhaps because of this) never clamors or declares itself provocatively present. Fifth, the trust he builds between himself and those who look at his lens and the respect he shows for the mystery and complexity of their personalities. Therefore, none of them fits into easy and unambiguous categories, even when the title of the section they belong to could lead to simplifications.
The fact that Davidson has divided his work into thematic sections should not force us to approach them from the same angle. These categories are, or rather were, necessary for the photographer to organize his work, define the framework within which he creates, support his motivations, and claim his publishing identities. In reality, his photographs exhibit such homogeneity and at the same time such uniqueness that they could be treated all together and each one separately. And this is a privilege only of the very important photographers. Between sections separated by many years, one discovers photographs that are related and speak in the same way and in other words about the same obsessions.
This was also my main concern when I tried to select some of them to compose a part of his work, capable however of hinting at its totality. I considered that one of the older sections, titled "Brooklyn Gang," could pass the baton (while also causing a great surprise) to the "Subway" section, and the latter could lead us to a new composition that is the wonderful "Central Park." In these sections (but also in the others not included in the exhibition), three rare artistic virtues are observed. To be precise, rare in their coexistence. Consistency, change, duration. Davidson of the first section is unreasonably mature and that of the last unexpectedly youthful. Davidson of the middle section surprises with his full and confident use of color, which gains its real value when we see him returning with new enthusiasm to the black and white of the third section. However, when the surprise and admiration for the changes and innovations subside, we are moved to find that the photographic curiosity of the early years, when the frame was divided into linear sections with hands, bodies, or sheets of metal, gave way to a new, renewed curiosity, one might say, when Davidson decided to "play" with new cameras, ultra-wide lenses, and extreme compositions, after he had tamed his boldness in the face of color and intense electronic flash lighting. The bold changes were thus controlled through consistency and continuity. That's why we feel lucky to have Bruce Davidson's wonderful work, and even more so because we confidently await what will follow.
Plato Rivellis