To view the full series from
Subway, visit
Magnum Photo Gallery
Subway
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| Bruce Davidson, 1980 |
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| Bruce Davidson, 1980 |
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| Bruce Davidson, 1980 |
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| Bruce Davidson + Guardian Angels, 1980 |
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| Bruce Davidson, 1980 |
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| Bruce Davidson, 1980 |
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| Bruce Davidson, 1980 |
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| Bruce Davidson, 1980 |
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| Bruce Davidson, 1980 |
Bruce Davidson is considered one of America’s most influential documentary photographers. His career began at the age of 10, when his mother built him a dark room. He studied at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Yale University School of Design. After living in New York for twenty-three years, Davidson began his startling color essay of suburban life in Subway which was shot in 1980.
Bruce Davidson’s Subway chronicles inhabitants of the New York City subway system. According to Davidson, this series examines “the people in the subway, their flesh juxtaposed against the graffiti, the penetrating effect of the strobe light itself, and even the hollow darkness of the tunnels.” The work “inspired an aesthetic that goes unnoticed by passengers who are trapped underground, hiding behind masks, and closed off from each other” (Via
Aperture)
This entire series is just fantastic to me. There are a lot of extreme colors captured through the clothes that the passengers are wearing and from the graffiti sprayed everywhere. Davidson’s use of shadows help to focus on the subjects in each shot. There are only a few shots that aren’t shown underground. These show people on the train platforms and are skylines of the city with the train tracks in view--they are still both in the dark, with looming shadows, but you catch glimpses of the sunlight in the photos reflecting onto the subjects and scenes which combine to make beautiful shots, like the photo of the woman wearing sunglasses.
There are several close-ups of hands holding onto the railing and passengers pressed very close on one another, so as a viewer you get the feeling of cramped spacing during a commute. He managed to capture a culture and a whole new dangerous world that many were unaware of. He showed various viewpoints and focal lengths with every photo capturing stillness while also capturing wide-shots of subjects and motion-blur with the train movement.
There were a few high and low angles but I feel as if to really get into the hustle and bustle public transit, it worked better to just stay in level with everything else that was going on. You can see he experimented with different ways to capture people and used the sunlight (which appears to be the only light in some shots) to cast shadows onto his subjects to keep the underground/tunnel effect. The graffitti provides the perfect backdrop for some of the subjects, creating nice juxtaposition. What I also noticed that while the photos were dark and left a lot in the shadows, that didn’t change the mood of the pictures and I think that’s because of the bright colors stood out.
I think this series of photos was more importantly to make light of the dangers of the NYC subway and Davidson's reason of casting shadows and letting the darkness consume these photos were to establish the reality of the city and to showcase what these people living in the city actually see on a daily basis. I thought these pictures were phenomenal and were a great series.
Sources: TIME, Magnum Photos, Aperture
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