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Bruce Davidson | Time of Change: 1961-1965

Time of Change (three bridesmaids), Bruce Davidson, 1962

Time of Change, Selma, Alabama,” Bruce Davidson, 1965

When I first printed this series, I made it very dark. I wanted these pictures to be like bronze statues from the MET. The emotion was so heavy there that I almost didn’t want to see anything, I wanted to feel it. Years later, I realized that I was losing a lot of information and printed them lighter so you could see for example a boy’s face that you did not see in the first ones. But there’s this minister, that I still know, who’s 93 years old, and was at the time a very important political figure in Harlem. He told me it was seen as the worst black neighborhood in the city but he would see it as the best black one. And it’s true; the spirituality of the people was fantastic.

– Bruce Davidson

Time of Change, New York City, Bruce Davidson, 1962

Time of Change, Chicago, Bruce Davidson, 1962

Time of Change, New York City, Bruce Davidson, 1962

Time of Change, Jackson, Mississippi, Bruce Davidson, 1961

Time of Change, South Carolina, Bruce Davidson, 1962

Time of Change, Birmingham, Alabama, Bruce Davidson, 1963

Time of Change, Trickum Forks, Alabama, Bruce Davidson, 1965

Time of Change, South Carolina, Bruce Davidson, 1962

Time of Change, New York City, Bruce Davidson, 1962

Time of Change, Jackson, Mississippi, Bruce Davidson, 1961

Time of Change, South Carolina, Bruce Davidson, 1962

Time of Change (crowd at fair), Bruce Davidson, 1962

Damn the Defiant, Time of Change, Bruce Davidson, 1963

Time of Change (Martin Luther King Jr., Montgomery, Alabama), Bruce Davidson, 1965

Time of Change (boy at blackboard), Bruce Davidson, 1965

Well, you know, I was young. And in the case of the civil-rights movement it took five years before I understood what I was looking at. I was not born understanding how important those marches were, and how violent they could be. I was there to see, to look.

– Bruce Davidson

Time of Change (three bridesmaids), Bruce Davidson, 1962

Time of Change (woman at window with American flag), Bruce Davidson, 1962

Time of Change (Freedom Riders), Bruce Davidson, 1965

Time of Change, Selma, Alabama, Bruce Davidson, 1965

I felt I was involved, but isolated; I didn’t want to be involved in anything. I wasn’t good at politics. I like to observe. You know, if you notice, in the photographs I made of Martin Luther King, Jr., I didn’t make my presence known to him. I observed him, and I have very good photographs of him, and the mark he made. But I didn’t go up and talk to him. I was a photographer.

– Bruce Davidson

doug