Reciprocity Failure

A guest speaker in a photography classroom once said “Photography is about life experiences, sometimes you have to live a little before you can make pictures.”  Truer words cannot be spoked about Bruce Davidson’s body of work he produced during his lifetime.  He showed the world New York in a light it had never been seen before with his projects such as “Brooklyn Street Gang”, “East 100th Street”, and “Subway”.  The New York metro system in the 1980′s was a mish mash of the upper and lower class into one large chaotic boiling pot.  Pimps stood shoulder to shoulder with stock brokers, hair dressers to bank executives, and drug dealers to accountants.  Davidson ventured into this dark tunnels armed with color film and a flash to show us the beauty and the underbelly of the beast.

“I wanted to transform this subway from its dark, degrading, and impersonal reality into images that open up our experience again to the color, sensuality, and vitality of the individual souls that ride it each day.” – Davidson

Despite Gilden’s use of flash, the photographs all feel very dark and isolated.  Long stands of fluorescent lights are the only ambient light source besides cloudy daylight we see in the pictures, but because of Gilden’s fast shutter these lights are almost all but drowned out leaving us with dramatic lighting situations that match the dramatic content.  Although the situations are all very dark, the photographs all have a warm tone to them that gives it life.  Dark cold metal feels alive and active, relaying the movement and activity that occurs in these subways.

Gilden’s content is not always heavy and dark, he shows the lighter aspects of life along the railways as well.  We’re given moments of women in fancy dresses standing along platforms, of children peering through graffiti covered windows to stare longingly at Coney Island, 1/125th’s of a second that show us the other side of these dark railways.  The body of work doesn’t attempt to show the subways as good or bad, but as both.  It merely attempts to show the trains for the active and lively places that they actually are, and defeat the misconception that these cold metal tunnels were deprived of any sort of culture.  Whether it be good or bad, it exists and is worthy of being appreciated.  That there’s beauty in both sides that should be recognized.

Bruce Gilden is still active in photography, most notably photographing Japan’s Yakuza gang members and bike gangs in the US.  Through out his life as a member of “Magnum Photos”, he hasn’t attempted to show the world with his camera the fascination he has with the overlooked and misunderstood portions of society.  Other works of his include “Brooklyn Street Gang” and “East 100th Street”.