Levi’s Photo Workshop: An Evening with Bruce Davidson

By Desiree RabuseDecember 10, 2010. .

It's kind of funny to see Bruce Davidson, photo, and shop in the same sentence. Davidson, a man who created a legacy off of real life photography, doesn't even use a digital camera. His career has been made on exclusively silver film and dedicated to everything real, beautiful, and sometimes disturbing. Last night I had the pleasure of attending the Levi's Photo Workshop discussion with Davidson, who one audience member described best as "disarmingly innocent." Incredible for a man who has photographed and seen so much. He has shot everyone from homeless people to Marilyn Monroe. Davidson spoke to the crowd as a movie screen-sized slideshow of his work, spanning some 50 years, played to a standing room-only crowd. It was incredible to hear the story behind each photograph from Bruce firsthand. Many of the most famous images were taken right here in New York City. His series from Spanish Harlem in the '60s was especially moving. People were so taken aback, the crowd was almost completely silent during the whole presentation. Despite images of dilapidated neighborhoods, homelessness, and unimaginable poverty, Bruce was able to capture a form of beauty.

Davidson described taking great risks to shoot his subjects, including climbing atop bridges, walking through rough neighborhoods, and getting mugged several times while shooting his subway series. The most incredible part is that he chose to do real life/documentary photography over the glitz and glamor of fashion photography. By the ‘60s he was in high-demand as a fashion photographer and he gave it up because he simply, “Wanted to shoot the South,” he said, referring to his photos shot in Alabama and South Carolina during the Civil Rights Movement.

In the 1964 he was hired by Esquire Magazine to shoot Los Angeles. They assumed he would shoot it as the glamorous image the city portrayed. Instead he shot real people doing real things—like eating and working out. The images wouldn’t be published for many years because, as Bruce said, ”Esquire didn’t get it at the time...but the Beastie Boys did.” They famously used one of his Esquire rejects for the cover of their triple-platinum album Ill Communication. The slideshow presentation ended with a photo of a palm tree-lined beach in Santa Monica, CA. A perfect ending, as Davidson described his current interest as “palm trees. I’m obsessed with palm trees right now.” He plans to return to Los Angeles in January or February 2011 to shoot, where he will have plenty of subjects to fulfill his current tall and skinny muse—the palm tree. At the end of the discussion one audience member asked, “What has been the scariest thing you’ve done in your career? Are you ever really scared?” Davidson’s response, “Every minute.”