PUBLISHER
Aperture

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 11.75 x 11.5 in. / 144 pgs / 118 color.

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ISBN 9781597111942 TRADE
List Price: $65.00 CDN $75.00

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In transforming the grim, abusive, violent, and yet often serene reality of the subway into a language of color, I see the subway as a metaphor for the world in which we live today. From all over the earth, people come into the subway. It's a great social equalizer. As our being is exposed, we confront our mortality, contemplate our destiny, and experience both the beauty and the beast. From the moving train above ground, we see glimpses of the city, and as the trains move into the tunnels, sterile fluorescent light reaches into the stony gloom, and we, trapped inside, all hang on together.

  

APERTURE

Bruce Davidson: Subway

Published by Aperture
Introduction by Fred Brathwaite a.k.a. Fab 5 Freddy. Text by Bruce Davidson. Afterword by Henry Geldzahler.

Featured image is reproduced from <a href="http://www.artbook.com/9781597111942.html">Bruce Davidson: Subway</a>.Bruce Davidson's groundbreaking Subway, first published by Aperture in 1986, has garnered critical acclaim both as a documentation of a unique moment in the cultural fabric of New York City and for its phenomenal use of extremes of color and shadow set against flash-lit skin. In Davidson's own words, “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, inspired an aesthetic that goes unnoticed by passengers who are trapped underground, hiding behind masks and closed off from each other.” In this third edition of what is now a classic of photographic literature, a sequence of 118 (including 25 previously unpublished) images transport the viewer through a landscape at times menacing, and at other times lyrical and soulful. The images present the full gamut of New Yorkers, from weary straphangers and languorous ladies in summer dresses to stalking predators and homeless persons. Davidson's accompanying text tells the story behind the images, clarifying his method and dramatizing his obsession with the subway, its rhythms and its particular madness.
Bruce Davidson (born 1933) is considered one of America's most influential documentary photographers. He began taking photographs when he was ten, and studied at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Yale University School of Design. In 1958 he became a member of Magnum Photos, and in 1962 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to document the civil rights movement. After a solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1963, Davidson spent two years photographing in Harlem, resulting in the book East 100th Street. In 1980, after living in New York City for 23 years, Davidson began Subway, his startling color essay of urban life.

Featured image is reproduced from Bruce Davidson: Subway.

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Photo District News

Holly Stuart Hughes

The brilliant flash, combined with fluorescent lighting, intense colors and Davidson’s probing vision, produced images that are dramatic and at times surreal.

The Guardian

Sean O'Hagan

Subway is Davidson's visceral take on the New York underground system of the 1980s complete with beleagured passengers, Guardian Angels, graffiti and a palpable, all-pervasive sense of fear. A glimpse of a New York that is already long gone.

Bruce Davidson: Subway

FROM THE BOOK
Bruce Davidson’s seminal work of early color photography is unsurpassed as a document of mid-1980s New York, and is here reissued by Aperture with ten previously unpublished images.

BRUCE DAVIDSON MONOGRAPHS + ARTIST'S BOOKS

Bruce Davidson: The Way Back

BRUCE DAVIDSON: THE WAY BACK

Steidl

ISBN: 9783969992319
USD $75.00
| CAN $110

Pub Date: 6/25/2024
Forthcoming


Bruce Davidson: Lesser Known

BRUCE DAVIDSON: LESSER KNOWN

Steidl

ISBN: 9783958293212
USD $75.00
| CAN $108

Pub Date: 1/21/2025
Forthcoming


Bruce Davidson: Circus

BRUCE DAVIDSON: CIRCUS

Steidl

ISBN: 9783958290174
USD $60.00
| CAN $79

Pub Date: 1/21/2025
Forthcoming


Bruce Davidson: Nature of Los Angeles 2008–2013

BRUCE DAVIDSON: NATURE OF LOS ANGELES 2008–2013

Steidl

ISBN: 9783869308142
USD $45.00
| CAN $60

Pub Date: 9/29/2015
Active | In stock


Bruce Davidson: Los Angeles 1964

BRUCE DAVIDSON: LOS ANGELES 1964

Steidl

ISBN: 9783869307893
USD $45.00
| CAN $60

Pub Date: 9/29/2015
Active | Out of stock


Bruce Davidson: In Color

BRUCE DAVIDSON: IN COLOR

Steidl

ISBN: 9783869305646
USD $85.00
| CAN $112.5

Pub Date: 1/31/2015
Active | In stock


Bruce Davidson: Black and White

BRUCE DAVIDSON: BLACK AND WHITE

Steidl

ISBN: 9783869304328
USD $250.00
| CAN $335

Pub Date: 2/15/2012
Out of stock indefinitely | Not available


Bruce Davidson: England Scotland 1960

BRUCE DAVIDSON: ENGLAND SCOTLAND 1960

Steidl

ISBN: 9783869304861
USD $60.00
| CAN $79

Pub Date: 10/31/2014
Active | In stock


Bruce Davidson: Outside Inside

BRUCE DAVIDSON: OUTSIDE INSIDE

Steidl Photography International

ISBN: 9783865219084
USD $250.00
| CAN $335

Pub Date: 6/30/2010
Active | In stock


Bruce Davidson: Subway

BRUCE DAVIDSON: SUBWAY

St. Ann's Press

ISBN: 9780971368187
USD $65.00
| CAN $75

Pub Date: 4/2/2004
No longer our product | Not available


Bruce Davidson: East 100Th Street

BRUCE DAVIDSON: EAST 100TH STREET

St. Ann's Press

ISBN: 9780971368132
USD $75.00
| CAN $90

Pub Date: 1/2/2003
No longer our product | Not available


Time Of Change

TIME OF CHANGE

St. Ann's Press

ISBN: 9780971368118
USD $65.00
| CAN $75

Pub Date: 9/2/2002
No longer our product | Not available


Bruce Davidson: Central Park

BRUCE DAVIDSON: CENTRAL PARK

Aperture

ISBN: 9780893816254
USD $40.00
| CAN $50

Pub Date: 6/15/2005
No longer our product | Not Available


Bruce Davidson: Central Park

BRUCE DAVIDSON: CENTRAL PARK

Aperture

ISBN: 9780893819927
USD $29.95
| CAN $35

Pub Date: 6/15/2005
No longer our product | Not Available


Bruce Davidson: Portraits

BRUCE DAVIDSON: PORTRAITS

Aperture

ISBN: 9780893818517
USD $20.98
| CAN $25

Pub Date: 6/15/2005
No longer our product | Not Available


Bruce Davidson: Subway

BRUCE DAVIDSON: SUBWAY

Aperture

ISBN: 9781597111942
USD $65.00
| CAN $75

Pub Date: 9/30/2011
No longer our product | Not Available


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