"Documentary photographer suggests you just stand back, that you're not in the picture, you're just recording. I am in the picture, believe me. I am in the picture but I am not the picture,"
–Bruce Davidson (The New York Times)
–Bruce Davidson (The New York Times)
“I live with my work…I photographed the widow [of a painter]. I had a visual love affair with the widow and her past.” Bruce Davidson announced as imagery of an old woman surrounded by framed masterpieces and entranced by the solitude of open lit rooms projected upon a screen backdrop. Listening to Davidson’s lecture as his images changed from one to the next made me stop and question why it is that I did not go to school for photography. Obviously I am still constantly photographing, and elements of my past knowledge definitely get incorporated into film that is in motion, but it again helped to highlight how photography is my true love.
I raced out of my experimental film course early today to hop onto route two and get home so that I could then give my brother his car back and find a way to get to Boston University fast, just in time to catch this lecture. I frantically ran in as I was fortunate in the program starting a few minutes late. I got to find and sit next to one of my friends, Dan, that I had taken pre-college photography courses with a few years earlier. He was actually there with many Art Institute of Boston (where I had taken my courses) students.
Davidson’s stories of his life sucked me in. The life he verbally shared with us involved photography, traveling, and interaction. He was articulate and witty, getting many laughs throughout the lecture. He explained how he mostly worked with large format because he loved the “beauty and tonality of image”. He usually carried his portfolio around with him for years. He stressed how as a photographer he wanted to see environments and people, “I was interested in the relationship between nature and people”.
After showing us the powerful photographs of the widow, he then moved on to tell us of another part of his career. He had joined a circus to travel and photograph what he experienced. Most of the images he showed involved people. He made fast friends with a dwarf, “Little Man” Jimmy Armstrong. He captures the bizarreness of the circus in such an elegant way.
(Images by Bruce Davidson)
In 1959, Davidson started photographing the street gang of Brooklyn known as “The Jokers”.
(Images by Davidson)
“But what I sense about them was their loneliness and depression…many of their famalies were dysfunctional…alchoholics: before drugs came in” stated Davidson. One image in particular that we were shown was of a kid named Benji. Davidson described of how this kid was rough and as portrayed in the photograph, was quite an angry kid. Davidson admitted to being afraid of even approaching him with a camera. Benji was a known notorious drug dealer. He later lost everything and went into rehab. After rehab, he started helping people with their drug problems. Many years later he looked up and tracked down Bruce and his wife. It was beautiful to have this strong image associate with the story the man behind the camera had experienced.
Davidson later went on to explain how different personalities were apparent in people he was photographing. One woman, Cathy was explained as the “Bridget Bartow” of the group. The gang later asked him to do fashion photography for them. He showed a beautiful image of a woman posing in a white dress against a large depth of a field and an industrial metal cone. The composition and photograph was nice, but the woman was quite small as the gang confronted Davidson. Telling the crowd what the gang said, he laughed, “Bruce, we love you, but you got to get closer to the model”.
(Image by Davidson)
One thing Davidson is especially well-known for is his photographs during the Civil Rights Movement. Davidson heard of a group of young people challenging the way things were. He began to roam Harlem. He explained how “The National Guard couldn’t be trusted, they were “homeboys”…they were from the south”. One series of photographs he showed us included members of the KKK holding a ceremony around a burning cross. Before, he had taken a flyer advertising the event and decided to head over with his camera. However, part way through the event, someone announced that the car that had a New York license plate was parked too close to the fire and Davidson decided that it was not only time to move his car, but he knew it was time to go.
(Images by Davidson)
Davidson has a way of getting into a visual intimate space. He showed us one photograph of a woman who had been a slave, but was now traveling at the age of 110. She lived to be 117 years old. He also had a way of capturing the intimacy in crowded moments that surrounded people such as Martian Luther King and Malcolm X.
(Images by Bruce Davidson)
The Citizen’s Committee tracked down Davidson and asked him to document the vitality of people. They wanted to better the treacherous conditions people had no choice but to grow up in. A lot started changing after his images surfaced to the public.
(Image by Bruce Davidson)
In 1963, Davidson described himself as being depressed. One day he found himself driving on the largest suspension bridge in the world. “I thought I got to get up there and borrowed a hard hat”. Hearing these sporadically inspired projects excited me because that is one way I love to work.
(Image by Bruce Davidson)
There were many random projects that Davidson either chased after or got assigned to. He spoke of Esquire sending him to Los Angeles for the first time, the Burlesque capturing he did not like being around at all, the film sets that he photographed stills on, the prisons he shot in Manhattan, the mines that he photographed, etc. He stated, “I’ve had an affinity for mines and dark tunnels…I traveled with a Welsh poet who knew where to take me. His [last] name was Jones”.
(Image by Davidson)
One series that he briefly showed was the subway series. He first spent six weeks photographing black and white in the city. So many of the photographs had individuals standing against a wall that had grown suffocated with graffiti. He shared that “graffiti somehow identified/made clear of what was in front of it”. Many of the students after the entire lecture said that they were surprised that he spent such little time discussing and showing his subway series. It was one part of his work that they had gone over in depth in school. One image that Davidson showed was of a man with a big scar across his face sitting on a subway. The man first saw his camera and threatened to break it if Davidson were to snap a photograph of him. Davidson reacted by explaining how he never photographed people without asking their permission first. He got up and crossed the subway as he sat next to the man. He pulled out his portfolio, which he tended to carry everywhere with him and started showing this man his work. The man in disbelief complemented Davidson on how good his work was and said “okay you can take my photograph”.
(Images by Bruce Davidson)
We were then shown a series of characters in a cafeteria. Davidson described them as being “like characters out of a novel…many were survivors from concentration camps”. During this time he also started capturing the changes happening that were apparent in the Lower Eastside.
(Image by Bruce Davidson)
Esquire later sent Davidson to France to photograph Ira who was famously known for murdering and cutting up his girlfriend in Philadelphia. He claimed how he was careful around him, quite obviously.
Davidson pulled up images he had taken of Senator Cleveland. The senator in the images before me had no legs and only one arm, and was bare for most of the photographs. This made it more powerful to see the human body in this nude and altered form. A bomb had gone off on him in Vietnam. In talking about Cleveland he claimed, “I had great respect for Senator Cleveland. He was dedicated”, as he showed an image of the senator in a suit debating heavily over paperwork that was being handed to him.
When Davidson was doing assignments for National Geographic, he shot in color and talked of his sudden interest in animals. He especially liked photographing animal life in the park. When he photographed people in the park he told of how he enjoyed capturing “an arm or a leg as roots [juxtaposed to a tree trunk], we are all vegetation".
(Image by Bruce Davidson)
He told of a story of one time he was photographing in the park: he was photographing a sculpture in the park. It was nighttime and he wanted to get the sculpture to look as if it was holding light. He had his friend Jane stand a far distance away with a strobe light. Whenever he held the shutter open, he would scream something like “Jane shutter open flash” repeatedly. However, after a few trial and errors, a man who was now standing behind Davidson started screaming “Flash us Jane!” Davidson yelled to his friend, “Jane, time to go home”.
When Davidson was sent to France and he found himself photographing the Eiffel Tower, he questioned why people always composed the tower against the river. He took many images where the camera looks up through the trees while also capture the tower. He described it as “nature in paris…the 500 year old tree and the Eiffel Tower sort of merge/become one”.
(Image by Bruce Davidson)
Davidson ended his program with a few interesting thoughts. One was how he stated that “it’s interesting ten years ago that I was still doing assignments, but there after have just lived off of my achieves”. It was interesting to have him point out his evolution as an artist and compare what seems like a small timeframe form the accumulating of work over the span of a much larger timeframe. And secondly, he explained how there is an “approach in photography”. He gave an example of when he was walking by a woman with two white dogs and wanted to photograph her. He would never go up to her and straight out ask “Can I take your photo?” That would scare her. He would walk up to her and say “What kind of dogs are these? They’re beautiful. Mind if I take their photo?” After she replied “Sure”, he would say, “Well, can you be in it?” She then answered after a pause of contemplation with another “Sure”. He then asked for her address to send her a copy and when she received the photograph, she claimed it was the best photograph that had ever been taken of her.
Davidson explained how it is like photographing a child. If you give directions to smile, you get a contrived expression, but if you say “don’t smile”, they can’t help but crack a natural emotion that coincides with humor. As Davidson summed up the approach to photography, he ended with the statement, “It becomes a game”.
After the lecture I went to search for my father in the city who had driven me last minute when I had to give my brother his car back in the time crunch that I had faced in traveling. I searched for him at a restaurant that he said he may be at and when I walked in to find him, Neil Young was playing. We reminisced of the Neil Young concert I had taken him to two years earlier for his Christmas present and the Bob Dylan concert I had gone to with him three years earlier. Bruce Davidson had shot a photograph that became a cover to Bob Dylan’s “Together Through Life Album”.
(Image taken from http://puddlegum.net/bob-dylan-beyond-here-lies-nothing/)
On the ride home, as I fiddled with my point and shoot camera and light and my father made fun of me, I thanked him for helping me out and told him how grateful I am for being able to see the lecture by Bruce Davidson.
When I relate the beauty of Davidson's creation of a relationship between word and image, it is a different beauty than what I have been defining in earlier entries. This beauty is not physical (although his photographs also hold physical beauty), it is more of an established idea in connecting his live speech to the images on screen. The pieces that I had been viewing before did not have the artist next to them explaining how, why, when. It made a connection to get the history, meaning, and emotion straight from the horses mouth. The words Davidson mostly spoke of were the explanations and memories behind each one of his images.
ReplyDeleteTo hear the artist talk about his work in person made the experience feel more personal and connected to the photograph on a verbal level. It was nice to feed into Davidson's nostalgia because as an artist myself, I appreciate the thought and physical process. This experience differed from the experience of seeing Nixon's work because there were more questions and gaps filled in for me. When I saw Nixon's work, I feel as if I left with more unanswered questions than Davidson's. I still felt fulfilled when I left, but it was nice to gain perspective on the back stories of Davidson's imagery.
Seeing an artist speak in person about his photographs however, made me realize that it may not always be the best way to see imagery. Interpretations may be more open to the viewer if there is less intervening with artists. This whole concept has actually caused a debate I keep bouncing back and forth from. Seeing The Nixon photographs on their own helped to show the loudness that can be taken from silent images, but Davidson's talk was extremely helpful being an artist myself. Looking back, I feel as if it was crucial that I witnessed both sides. I love imagery just the same either way (being introduced by an artist or by a blank room), but the technical and conceptual sides can be interpreted differently in certain atmospheres. One left me with more questions, but perhaps that is not a very bad thing?
Davidson has a way of getting into a visually intimate space, especially when he gets as close to his subjects as he does. When I state "close", this is not necessarily a purely physical definition. While he gets into the personal spaces of his subjects, he also digs his camera into the personal emotion, feeling, and secrecy of people. For example, when he was photographing a young gang, he endangered himself at times by approaching the members: yet, he captured the intimate anger, youth, pride, innocence, sadness, abused, hurt, violent, depressed, drugged, revolting etc. feelings in these kids' (and I use the word "kid" heavily) faces. As a photographer, Davidson constantly captured physical spaces and closeness many never approached, thus leading to the strong emotional responses from subjects.
ReplyDeleteDavidson even has the ability to get close to subjects that were engaged in crowded public events (that would one day become historical). The way in which he gets up close on these subjects, such as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, are both physically and emotionally close as well. In photographs of these two heroes, they are usually surrounded by crowds of people with energy, (good or bad). While some of Davidson's photographs show these men as cast in their crucial public leadership positions, Davidson also gets intimate by capturing their more uncertain moments. In some photographs, they look terrified out of their minds for what they are attempting to make happen, or what is making them question a present public moment. These scared looks of uncertainty help to display the courage it took, and more importantly, they help to show that these legends were real people. Although they were strong, they had emotions just like everybody else. Davidson captures the ranges of feelings from passion, strength, fighting, being overwhelmed, uncertainty, being scared, and seeking support while giving support. His photographs makes it feel as if the viewer is looking in from the crowd themselves.
ReplyDeleteWhen specifically highlighting the impact of Davidson's images of the poor community (after Davidson had been asked by the The Citizen’s Committee to photograph the horrible conditions), there was a shift in community action/people coming in and helping to clean up the community. This demonstrates the power and effectiveness of imagery. Although in this course I have been discovering and arguing that seeing pieces in person is more powerful, I am not discounting the power that can still be held within imagery. I would suspect that people who could help this cause would be more willing if they were standing in front of the run down community, but in this instance, documentation does a strong job of representation. I would still argue that this representation is not 100% truth, but it captured enough truth to get the message across and prompted people to help clean up the poor community.
ReplyDeleteWhen I had stated that Davidson's subjects popped out more when standing in front of graffiti, there is a connection that can be made between imagery and word. When I initially stated this, I had the psychological theory of the "pop-out effect" running through my mind: a subject suddenly pops out when it's background creates more contrast. This was a clear conscious choice that Davidson had made. Revisiting these pieces have conjured up the recognition of other awareness I had not explored yet. The way in which subjects are coupled, or rather fight against written words are a crucial coincidence Davidson composes in his work.
ReplyDeleteWhen comparing this idea of a relationship between word and image, I would say that it is in a different sense than most pieces I have mentioned thus far. For example, some pieces at The Decordova Museum had plaques with written words, stories, and poems on them to associate with the present piece. However, in Davidson's Subway Series, the text is actually a part of the piece itself. It makes a relation between word and subject.
The words themselves in these portraits feel grimy and overwhelming. The way in which Davidson captures these train riding subjects portrays these characters as uncomfortable and unfitting towards their backdrops, or fit right in to their manipulated surroundings. Capturing different subjects against similar backdrops of graffiti helps to highlight the obvious differences of individuals' physical presence in relation to these word covered subway walls.
Seeing Anger's work and being able to hear him speak about the pieces I watched was a radically different experience than the films that I watched at the Views From The Avant-garde New York Film Festival. Firstly, I heard about the processes of filming and editing. I heard steps that I would have never known about by just watching the film. It could be argued that I could hear about processes on commentaries, which I have done before with Anger's films, but seeing him speak in person gave me a sense of his personality and presence. Nothing he was saying was edited, besides the filter between his brain and his mouth. It felt not completely staged or manipulated. When I had gone to the New York Film Festival, no artists spoke. I had mixed feelings about it. Some films I felt better not hearing about, it left me wondering. This applies to Ben Russell's films, as it left me thinking for days after. However, at the same time as a filmmaker, I think it could have been beneficial to hear about processes or reasonings. I do think it was important for me to hear Anger speak because I had already watched so many of his films and listened to his commentaries, I had not heard him speak live yet about his films that I was already familiar with.
ReplyDeleteIt is an interesting question to pose as to whether or not I would appreciate Ken Jacob's piece in Views From The Avant-grade more if I had heard him speak about it. I cannot really say for certain, but I have a feeling that I would hold the same dislike towards the film. Perhaps if I heard the artist speak of his piece, I would develop different perceptions of the piece. This may be a bit of a tangent, but relates: this makes me question an idea I keep coming back to as a filmmaker -- is it a bad thing to support work and heavily connect to an artist that is so divorced from my relationship with a piece? This question was first sparked by personal experiences. People that have treated me badly make political art to stop bad treatment of others. Can only surface level connections be made between a piece and a spectator without knowing the artist? I believe seeing the pieces in person are a big step-up from viewing pieces in a book, but it's difficult to acquire truth when the artist is non-existent, only in a associated name reality. Anyways, as I still struggle with this question, one that has recently surfaced in my life, I find myself attempting to define it as I meet, work with, seek, listen to, and read about more artists.
I'm glad that I finally got to see Anger speak, and I think it would have been beneficial to hear artists from the Views speak, but I think it was more important to see someone I had studied before. There's no doubt that Views would have been radically different if the artists had spoken. I suspect that it could have been more beneficial to hear the artists speak about some aspects of process and concepts, but I respect and gained a lot of perspective from the way in which the film festival was set up.
Seeing Anger's work and being able to hear him speak about the pieces I watched was a radically different experience than the films that I watched at the Views From The Avant-garde New York Film Festival. Firstly, I heard about the processes of filming and editing. I heard steps that I would have never known about by just watching the film. It could be argued that I could hear about processes on commentaries, which I have done before with Anger's films, but seeing him speak in person gave me a sense of his personality and presence. Nothing he was saying was edited, besides the filter between his brain and his mouth. It felt not completely staged or manipulated. When I had gone to the New York Film Festival, no artists spoke. I had mixed feelings about it. Some films I felt better not hearing about, it left me wondering. This applies to Ben Russell's films, as it left me thinking for days after. However, at the same time as a filmmaker, I think it could have been beneficial to hear about processes or reasonings. I do think it was important for me to hear Anger speak because I had already watched so many of his films and listened to his commentaries, I had not heard him speak live yet about his films that I was already familiar with.
ReplyDeleteIt is an interesting question to pose as to whether or not I would appreciate Ken Jacob's piece in Views From The Avant-grade more if I had heard him speak about it. I cannot really say for certain, but I have a feeling that I would hold the same dislike towards the film. Perhaps if I heard the artist speak of his piece, I would develop different perceptions of the piece. This may be a bit of a tangent, but relates: this makes me question an idea I keep coming back to as a filmmaker -- is it a bad thing to support work and heavily connect to an artist that is so divorced from my relationship with a piece? This question was first sparked by personal experiences. People that have treated me badly make political art to stop bad treatment of others. Can only surface level connections be made between a piece and a spectator without knowing the artist? I believe seeing the pieces in person are a big step-up from viewing pieces in a book, but it's difficult to acquire truth when the artist is non-existent, only in a associated name reality. Anyways, as I still struggle with this question, one that has recently surfaced in my life, I find myself attempting to define it as I meet, work with, seek, listen to, and read about more artists.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that I finally got to see Anger speak, and I think it would have been beneficial to hear artists from the Views speak, but I think it was more important to see someone I had studied before. There's no doubt that Views would have been radically different if the artists had spoken. I suspect that it could have been more beneficial to hear the artists speak about some aspects of process and concepts, but I respect and gained a lot of perspective from the way in which the film festival was set up.
Hearing an artist speak seems more beneficial to me than only conversing with students because having multiple experiences are influential and because of age and experience. Artists that I go to see have made it to a certain point because they are deemed "talented" by certain people and have a lot of experience with film. I realize that I may not agree with this opinion of some artists as being "talented", but I think it is important to start seeking and making those judgments for myself. Many who are talented never get well known, but when opportunity rises, I attempt to catch those who are well known.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, it is extremely helpful to talk with my peers and professors in the film department, but I believe no matter where I am physically or mentally in life, it is important to get out and take from different contexts that resemble a similar place that I hope to be later in the film world of my life. Getting outside of what is familiar breaks artistic numbness. When stuck in one place talking to the same people, as an artist, I personally feel creatively immobile and suffocated. It is crucial to find outside influences in order for my work to improve and progress.
I pour everything I have into my films, but I am also aware as I finish each year that I can always improve. Each time I finish a film, I tend to be an extreme self-critic and look back on aspects that I harshly label as "student film esque". I understand that this is a necessary step in being a filmmaker and learn from it, but seeking outside influences, different area influenced film, and related experiences will help to point out contrasts in the work I am surrounded by at school, and work coming from more experienced filmmakers. I'm not saying that all work from these filmmakers is always better than work I know coming from students, but seeking these outside contexts to access and form opinions about will help me to grow into an artist that can produce more sophisticated and mature work.