Bruce Davidson (b. 1933) photographed Central Park in New
York City throughout his career. He first sought out the park in the 1960s for
its peace and tranquility, capturing nature and open spaces in his images. Davidson,
however, was also drawn to the park as a space of social interaction. He
returned to Central Park in the early 1990s, photographing many of the same
places he had documented much earlier with a renewed interest in the people in
the park, noting, “This 1992 park project, thirty-two years later, engaged a
different point of view from my past body of work. I approached people and
became aware that we are all part of nature.” Davidson’s photographs record the
park’s transformations, from day to night, seasonally and socially. The
landscape architect Elizabeth Barlow Rogers has said of this series, “In
Davidson’s work we discover the park to be a great theater of human, animal,
and vegetal life, a place where nature and humanity interact and in the process
become mutually transformed.”
Davidson grew up in Oak Park near Chicago and became
interested in photography at a young age. He studied the medium at the
Rochester Institute of Technology and Yale University. When drafted into the
U.S. Army, Davidson was stationed in the photography lab of the Supreme
Headquarters Allied Powers Europe outside of Paris. There he met Henri
Cartier-Bresson, who became his friend and mentor. Two years later, in 1958,
Davidson joined the renowned agency Magnum Photos (cofounded by
Cartier-Bresson), becoming, at 24 years old, the youngest member. Throughout
his career he has displayed a sustained engagement with social and political
concerns, working in series over extended periods of time.
