Bruce Davidson began photography at the age of ten in Oak Park, Illinois. In 1949, at the age of 16, he won his first prize in the Kodak National High School Competition. He went on to attend the Rochester Institute of Technology and Yale University. After military service in 1957, he worked as a freelance photographer for Life Magazine and in 1958 became a member of Magnum Photos, the international photography agency. Davidson continued to photography extensively from 1958 to 1961 creating such bodies of work as "The Dwarf", "Brooklyn Gang", and the "Freedom Rides". He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1962 to photograph what became a documentation of the "Civil Rights Movement". This work included images from an early Malcolm X rally in Harlem, steel workers in Chicago, Klu Klux Klan cross burnings, migrant farm camps in South Carolina, cotton pickers in Georgia and the protest marches and demonstrations in Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. In 1963 the Museum of Modern Art in New York presented his work in a "one man" show that included, among others, these historically important images. Bruce Davidson: EAST 100TH STREET, HARLEM, NEW YORK 1966-1968
Bruce Davidson: EAST 100TH STREET, HARLEM, NEW YORK 1966-1968