Bruce Davidson

Bruce Davidson photographed the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s. A true storyteller, Davidson documented the inequalities afflicting the lives of black Americans. His quest ranged from the rural south to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. Black Americans is a powerful portrait of a woman sitting quietly in the back of a police van, arrested for fighting for her rights. In Black Americans, as in many of his images, Davidson photographs the subject straight on, establishing a connection between the viewer and the subject and opening up a dialogue between them. This is an image of someone exercising defiance against immense odds, it humanizes both subjects and viewers in an effort to, in his words, “open up a journey of consciousness.”