Bruce Davidson’s ‘Subway’
I have chosen to focus my essay on the work of photographer, Bruce Davidson. Davidson is a very interesting photographer, he has produced photographic work for over half a century, and has documented various monumental places and events during his life span, including the Civil Rights Movement, a street in the middle of Harlem, which he relentlessly photographed for two years (the series is named East 100th Street) and gangs of Brooklyn. Davidson’s work has a semi photojournalistic feel to it, in that, although his photographs are certainly beautiful to look at, they are striking and sometimes eye-opening without suggesting that the subject has been exploited by the lens. For instance, in ‘East 100th street’ he photographs the homeless, addicts, thieves and prostitutes as well as families, children and couples, and you realise that he is just documenting everyday life on this street. Interestingly, it is those people who experience poverty everyday and it is those with the least that seem the most content in allowing him into their lives to take photographs. The people in his photographs do not seem to fear the camera’s gaze, in fact in all off these images he manages to capture people looking extremely natural. I believe this is because of his persistence in returning to, and practically living on the same street for two years. He manages to eliminate the element of him being an outsider and the camera being alien.
However, I am not focusing my essay on East 100th Street, but on Davidson’s only known series shot in colour, called ‘Subway’. Subway is a series containing forty-seven images, all shot on the New York subway system from 1980 to 1985. This is my favourite of his series’, firstly because of the subject, the New York transit system, the beautiful, coiling, metal monstrosity, that prowls through the underground and up onto and above the streets connecting all five boroughs of one of the most photographic urban landscapes in the world. The second reason for my love of this series is the time period in which it was shot. - 1980, the last golden years of graffiti on the subway in New York, meaning that the backdrop for each and every photograph is graffiti ridden. This in my opinion adds to the rawness of each photograph and contributes a lot to the variety of vibrant colours present in each image. The calligraphy strewn across every surface of each train so relentlessly makes you forget that the photograph was taken inside the carriage, in some kind of moving art box, and it is the people within the actual photographs that bring the context back to each image. Either that, or the silhouette of the city’s skyline through a dusty window, reminding you that this box is in motion and on a predetermined path through
the city.
Each and every photograph in ‘Subway’ is intricate, inspiring and beautiful and yet each one also holds a kind of sadness and darker feeling to it. In some of the photos this is more obvious than others. Bruce Davidson said, about ‘Subway’ “When in the subway, what is beautiful appears bestial, and what is bestial becomes beautiful…. people in the subway, their flesh juxtaposed against the metallic surface, and even the hollow darkness itself, moved me to uncover a beauty that goes unnoticed by passengers, who are themselves trapped underground, hide behind protective masks, closed off and unseeing” I read this quote after seeing the collection at the Tate and it began making more sense to me as a single piece of work rather than just as a set of photos. What Davidson had captured, and why he had decided to feature those who use the subway in most of his photos rather than just the metal people carriers themselves has something to do with the naivety of these subjects as they are captured up against the grit, beauty and strong ambience of New York’s underworld. His regular use of an extreme wide angle lens and utilization of light and colour to accentuate subjects, not only meant that his images have a strange, austere feel to them, but that he takes a stylistic leap in ‘Subway’ and creates a series unlike any of his others.
It wouldn’t be difficult to thoroughly analyse each and every one of Davidson’s photos due to their extreme complexity, and I think this makes it more difficult to talk about the piece as a whole, like all of his other work, ‘Subway’ withholds a certain element of persistency. Davidson took to the trains on most days at sundown, from 1980 to 1985 and he underwent a training course that would allow him to move efficiently whilst carrying heavy photographic equipment in order to evade thieves and muggers. This element, that Davidson could have been in danger whilst taking these images, adds all the more to the strange feel to the photographs - that something so beautiful could have come out of his risk. As the Tate website explains, in fact Davidson claimed that his “intention was to show the beauty that “co-existed with the danger”:
“In transforming the grim, abusive, violent, and often beautiful reality of the subway into a language of colour, I see the subway as a metaphor for the world in which we live in today. It is a great social equalizer. As our being is exposed, we confront our mortality, contemplate our destiny, and experience both the beauty and the beast. From the moving train above ground we see glimpses of the city, and as the train moves into the tunnel fluorescent light reaches into the gloom, and trapped inside, we all hang on together." (Davidson quoted on Tate website https://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/CollectionDisplays?venueid=2&roomid=6244)
I think that to capture the rawness of Davidson’s subway series I would have to consider the way he composes a photo, his ability in seeking out obscure angles and capturing incredible light. It is also his ‘straight on’ approach and undivided consistency to a subject. In ‘Subway’, many of the most striking and iconic looking photos were taken as close ups, in order to capture an idea of the people who travel on the subway, their lives are suggested, and through these images which let the viewer creates stories. Each photo provokes a story in my head, and often this story is quite melancholy, although this may not be true of the circumstances of actual person caught in the lens.
This, along with the sheer beauty of each and every photo, is the reason why ‘Subway’ inspires me and is one of my favourite photographic pieces of work as a whole.
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