Bruce Davidson: Subway

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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.

One day I spotted this young man on the subway train at Coney Island who absorbed so much bright sun he appeared to be radiant.Also, just for precautionary measure, he wanted to be in good shape if something went wrong down there in the underground. As I went down the subway stairs, through the turnstile, and onto the darkened station platform, a sinking sense of fear gripped me. Yet, as is the paradox of New York itself, these photographs also highlight the isolation of individuals within this sea of passengers; in his words “ [people] who are trapped underground, hiding behind masks, and closed off from each other.

Subway photography embodies an American classic, colorful, dark, and compelling epitome of America’s underground society as depicted through the imagery. Davidson's accompanying text tells the story behind the images, clarifying his method and dramatizing his obsession with the subway, its rhythms and its particular madness. Davidson started playing at being a detective, channeling the idea in the subway that he was untouchable.Emblazoned with graffiti and bathed in the unsettling fluorescence of cheap strobe lights, for most, it was a perilous place replete with violent gangs and the homeless. Many were willing, enthusiastic even, about showcasing the realities of the subway system, but, with his expensive camera slung round his neck, Davidson also fell victim to attacks and muggings. He familiarized himself with a smaller area, and used that to tell a much larger story, due to the intimacy with his subjects. full-pg illustrations in color, signed by Davidson on the half title, afterword by Henry Geldzahler; fine in original gray cloth, pictorial dust jacket. Institutional support for the Museum is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.

Existing beneath a city defined by its diversity and promise of opportunity, the subway appears as a microcosm of this sprawling urban metropolis: a democratizing realm where individuals from all walks of life sit side by side in a setting as frantic and unruly as the streets above. He then was able to capture some of the most terrifying moments of evil, violence, and death; something street photography newbies would struggle with. After a solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1963, Davidson spent two years photographing in Harlem, resulting in the book East 100th Street.Steadily deteriorating ever since the opening of the first underground line in 1904, by the time Davidson embarked on his project in the spring of 1980, the subway had reached its lowest ebb. Born in 1933 near Chicago, Davidson’s subjects have including the Civil Rights Movement in the early ’60s, a Brooklyn gang, Spanish Harlem, circus performers, and a 5-year project on New York’s subway system in the gritty ‘80s.