NEW YORK, NY.- This volume presents Bruce Davidson’s personal selections from his lesser-known color archive. Ranging from a period of fifty-six years and counting, these images are representative of the photographer’s color career. Assignments from various magazines (Vogue, National Geographic, Life magazine) and commercial projects led him to photograph fashion (early 1960s), the Shah of Iran with his family (1964), keepers of French monuments (1988), the supermodel Kylie Bax (1997), and college cheerleaders (1989). He photographed in India and China, but also at home in New York, in Chicago, and along the Pacific Coast Highway. In 1968, Michelangelo Antonioni invited him to document the making of his film Zabriskie Point. Davidson also continued to pursue personal projects, e.g. photographing the Yiddish writer and Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer (1972–75), the New York City subway (1980), and Katz’s Delicatessen (2004). Often staying on in a country after an official assignment, he documented Welsh coalfields, family holidays in Martha’s Vineyard, and travelled through Patagonia and Mexico.

Bruce Davidson, renowned as a documentary photographer, worked around the world for magazines including Vogue, National Geographic, and Life, and often stayed on after official assignments to pursue personal projects. Whether made abroad or closer to home, these color photographs are executed with the same vigor and intensity associated with his black and white work.

The images on view represent Davidson’s personal selections from his lesser-known color archive. Spanning nearly 50 years, the exhibition shows the breadth of his career as he photographed in India and China, at home in New York, in Chicago, and along the Pacific Coast Highway. Davidson also documented Welsh coalfields, family holidays in Martha’s Vineyard, and his travels through Patagonia and Mexico.

In a career spanning more than half a century, Davidson is one of America’s most distinguished photographers. Born in 1933 in Oak Park, Illinois, he began taking photographs at the age of ten. He attended Rochester Institute of Technology and Yale University, where he studied with Josef Albers. He was later drafted into the army and stationed near Paris where he met Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the founders of the renowned cooperative photography agency Magnum Photos.

After his military service, Davidson worked as a freelance photographer for LIFE magazine and in 1959 became a member of Magnum. In 1963, The Museum of Modern Art in New York presented his early work in a solo exhibition, the first of several. Upon completion of his work on the American Civil Rights Movement, he received the first grant for photography from the National Endowment for the Arts. From 1966-68, Davidson spent two years documenting the neglected block of East 100th Street in Manhattan. In 1980, he explored the distressed New York City subway. From 1991-95 he photographed the landscape and layers of life in Central Park. More recently, he followed this exploration of nature to Paris, where he photographed the relationship between nature and urban life, and now continues this quest in Los Angeles.

His work has been exhibited at major institutions including The Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography in New York, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. He has received many grants, awards, and fellowships in addition to an honorary doctorate in fine arts from the Corcoran School of Art and Design. His photographs have appeared in numerous publications and his work is the subject of many books. He lives in New York City.