DAVIDSON, BRUCE

born 1933, Oak Park, Ill., U.S. American photographer and filmmaker whose emotionally charged pictures frequently convey the loneliness and isolation of his subjects. Davidson studied photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology, N.Y. (195154), and at the School of Design of Yale University (1955). He worked for Life magazine for a year before joining the Magnum photographic cooperative in 1958. He produced a number of outstanding photo-essays on such subjects as a circus clown, a Brooklyn teenage gang, Welsh mining towns, and London life. Davidson's most important project was East 100th Street (1970), a selection of 123 photographs from more than 1,000 he took with a large-format camera of the inhabitants of a single block in East Harlem in New York City over a two-year period. These pictures are distinguished by their sensitivity and dignity and by the close rapport evident between the photographer and his subjects. Davidson also provided photographs for Subsistence U.S.A. (1973), with text by Carol Hill. Bruce Davidson: Photographs was published in 1979. He also made several short films.