New York, NY, October 7, 2009- Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery
and Howard Greenberg Gallery are pleased to announce simultaneous
exhibitions of the photographs of Bruce Davidson.
The
exhibition at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, Five Decades, celebrates the
fifty-year career of Bruce Davidson, with representative works from many
of the artist's well-known essays. Photographs from Circus (1958),
Brooklyn Gang (1959), Time of Change (1961), Los Angeles (1964), Subway
(1980) as well as recent images will be exhibited. For this exhibition,
Davidson has produced large format prints of signature works, many for
the first time. The scale and location of the new Bryce Wolkowitz
Gallery provides an opportunity to re-contextualize Davidson's work. Of
his show Wolkowitz said, "Bruce Davidson has had a profound influence on
contemporary photography over the last five decades. We are excited to
have the opportunity to showcase this legendary photographer's work in
the heart of Chelsea's contemporary art district and to introduce it to a
much wider audience."
The exhibition at Howard Greenberg
Gallery, entitled East 100th Street, The MoMA Show as Curated by John
Szarkowski in 1970, is a re-creation of The Museum of Modern Art's
groundbreaking 1970 exhibition of forty-two photographs by the highly
regarded Bruce Davidson. The photographs in the exhibition are the
actual prints, presented in the exact manner in which they were shown at
MoMA in 1970.
Davidson's East 100th Street constitutes a
significant social document. During 1967 and 1968, Davidson photographed
on a New York block that in the 1950's had the reputation of being one
of the worst in the city. He was first attracted to the area because of
the work of the Metro North Association, a committee of residents that
were actively involved in trying to improve their neighborhood. Through
this association and with a grant from the National Endowment for the
Arts, Davidson gained access to the people on the block. About this
work Szarkowski wrote, "He has shown us true and specific people,
photographed in these private moments of suspended action in which the
complexity and ambiguity of individual lives triumph over abstraction."
In appreciation for their cooperation, Davidson gave prints of his
photographs to hundreds of residents of the block. Many of these people
attended the opening of the exhibition at the museum.
Both
galleries are also celebrating the Steidl publication of the three
volume opus entitled Outside/Inside containing over 800 photographs that
span Davidson's entire career.
Also on exhibit at the Howard
Greenberg Gallery will be the recently published limited edition
portfolio entitled Bruce Davidson: Central Park in Platinum. The
fourteen images in the portfolio were made during many of Davidson's
explorations of the park that began in 1991 and continue to this day.
Bruce
Davidson was born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1933. He attended the
Rochester Institute of Technology and Yale University. When he completed
military service in 1957 he worked as a photographer for Life Magazine
and in 1958, became a member of Magnum Agency. He has had one-man
exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, The Smithsonian Museum of
American Art, The Walker Art Center, The International Center of
Photography, The Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, The Aperture
Foundation, and The Foundacion Cartier-Bresson in Paris. He has received
numerous grants and awards including two grants from the National
Endowment of the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Lucie Award for
Outstanding Achievement in Documentary Photography in 2004 and the Gold
Medal Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Arts Club in 2007.
His photographs have appeared in numerous publications and his prints
have been acquired by many major museums worldwide. He has also directed
three films.
Davidson continues to lecture, conduct workshops and produce astounding images.