JN-134, Photographer of the Week: Bruce Davidson

Bruce Davidson is a documentary photographer who was born in 1933 and has been a staff photographer for Magnum Photography since 1959. He initially started contributing to them in 1956.

Davidson attended college at the Rochester institute of Technology and Yale. Davidson owes much of his technique to early instruction from the painter Josef Albers, who Davidson told the New York Times instructed him on how colors could capture the “movement” and “life” of a photograph. During his time at Yale, he had a photo of the school’s football team published in LIFE magazine. Davidson served time in the army after college and shot many photos of his surroundings for the newspaper at his post.

Bruce Davidson, Magnum Photos (Via TIME)

Following his work with the military, Davidson joined Magnum and documented a little bit of everything, including a photo which later became a Beastie Boys album cover. Davidson’s greatest claim to fame consists of many photographs he shot during the civil rights movement between 1961 and 1965.

According to the New York Times, although many consider him a "documentary photographer," Davidson himself disagrees. He believes as a photographer that he's a legitimate part of the photo, even though he's not literally in it.

"Documentary photographer suggests you just stand back, that you're not in the picture, you're just recording. I am in the picture, believe me. I am in the picture but I am not the picture," he said during his interview.

Among Davidson's mentors are Robert Frank, Eugene Smith, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, the man who recruited him to the Magnum photo agency.

Sources:

New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/arts/28iht-blume.4748533.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
 
TIME Magazine Online, Bruce Davidson Photo Essay:
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1975355,00.html
 
Bruce Davidson: Magnum Photos
http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP=XSpecific_MAG.PhotographerDetail_VPage&pid=2K7O3R14QG6O&nm=Bruce%20Davidson