Bruce Davidson
[Photographer, b. 1933, Oak Park, Illinois, lives in New York.]
All my photographs are portraits—self-portraits, because you can’t photograph someone without reflecting/echoing, like a bat sending out a signal that comes back to you. You get not only a picture of who you’re photographing, but you get a picture of yourself at the same time.
Most of my photographs are compassionate, gentle, and personal. They tend to let the viewer see himself. They tend not to preach. And they tend not to pose as art.
I don’t always know why I’m photographing something. It’s my learning machine.
I am a photographer in the way you might be a plumber. I like it that way.
I’ve had the privilege of being an outsider allowed on the inside, searching for beauty, meaning and myself.
Most young boys have a buddy. I had a camera. I was pretty much a loner, and I was doomed to failure because I wasn’t interested in anything other than taking pictures and developing them in my darkroom.
In those days [1948], to be a photographer was actually to be a nonentity. My brother went to college, grad school, a PhD. I had this little camera.
Too much in photography is shoot and leave.
