December 5, 1998 to March 7, 1999

Bruce Davidson: The Brooklyn Gang, 1959 is the first museum exhibition of Bruce Davidson's photographs from his documentary project about a teenage gang from Brooklyn. This presentation of approximately 50 black-and-white photographs, most never before seen, will be shown at the International Center of Photography, 1130 Fifth Avenue (at 94th Street), New York City from December 5, 1998 to March 7, 1999.

In the spring of 1959, Davidson spent several months photographing a group of Brooklyn teenagers who called themselves "The Jokers". Davidson was introduced to the gang by a social worker and gradually became a part of their world as he hung out with them in the neighborhood, in Prospect Park and at Coney Island. Davidson's photographs of the gang show us street-wise young men and their girlfriends, in various states of wariness, vacancy, and sometimes hope, as they move through a landscape of beaches and boardwalks, street corners and diners. His camera records both the particular details of the gang members' lives, such as the tattoos, sunglasses and slicked-back hair that signify their toughness, and a more general sense of their vulnerability and vitality. The youth's restless activity is presented more as a desperate search for love and good times than for criminal wrongdoing.

Taken as a whole, the powerful and poignant images of The Brooklyn Gang form a complex portrait of longing, anxiety and alienation. Davidson's work asks us to consider how we can find beauty, meaning and understanding in the lives of others, including those who are troubled or in crisis. The Brooklyn Gang is an intimate portrait, but ultimately its subject is greater than the coming-of age of one group of inner-city teenagers. Davidson's images at once evoke a specific time and place, and suggest universal experiences such as the transition from youth to adulthood, first loves, and the bonds of friendship. They also provide a more immediate and candid record of teenage life in the 1950s, an era often portrayed with nostalgia by television and Hollywood. Davidson's compassionate translation of this troubled yet more innocent time evokes shared memories of growing up in America during this half of the twentieth century.

Bruce Davidson is one of America's most respected and influential documentary photographers. He was born in 1933 in Oak Park, Illinois and attended the Rochester Institute of Technology and Yale University. Davidson has been a member of Magnum Photos, the renowned international photography agency, since 1958. He received the first photography grant ever given by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1966 and spent the next two years photographing East 100th Street in New York's Harlem. His work has appeared in Vogue, Vanity Fair, LIFE, Esquire and many other publications around the world. One-person exhibitions of Davidson's work have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, The Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American Art, and the International Center of Photography.

© 1998, International Center of Photography