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Central Park by Bruce Davidson (Aperture) Celebrated photographer Bruce Davidson has won fame by documenting the urban landscape of New York and its human inhabitants--a teenage gang in Brooklyn, the denizens of a run-down tenement block in East Harlem, the colorful characters that people the gritty underworld of the New York subway. Article rating: 7.25

In Central Park, he turns his attention to the verdant heart of the city and the multifarious life that dwells within, painting an astonishing and spectacular portrait of the great park that is also a study of humanity in its poignant fellowship with nature.

The book’s 128 pages contain 103 black-and-white images of the interior of Central Park. Whether vigorous scenes of rollerblading citygoers, pictures of picnics, homosexual lovers, rapt bird-watchers, or drowsy bench-sitters, or images of leafy canopies, frozen ponds, or skyscrapers shimmering reflectively in ruffled waters, the images are uniformly striking and expressive. Davidson seems equally at home with man and nature: the people who visit, explore, study, exercise in, live in, or have sex in the park, are treated with as much compassion as the flora and fauna that make up its natural landscape.

Most impressive and provocative of all are the photographs that suggest the unity of man with natureof humanity and its creations merging seamlessly into, or growing out of, the natural landscape. The cover image is one such picture, showing four shirtless boys playing by the side of a Central Park pond. Three of the boys are hanging from tree limbs that overhang the pond, while the fourth is gripping onto a limb protruding from the ground. The dark lighting of the human figures matches the darkness of the tree limbs, and the boys look like they might be limbs themselves, or trees sprouting out of the water. The scene has a kind of primeval innocence that is not at all diminished by the glimpse of buildings towering over the trees in the backgroundbuildings which here seem as ancient and immutable as the half-billion-year-old rocks that are strewn about the park.

In another stirring image, a row of lit-up buildings provides the background for a nocturnal scene of snowy forest verdure. The lights of the building windows are, at first glance, indistinguishable from the white points of snow that mark out shrubbery, tree limbs, and patches of ground in the wintry park. The buildings in the background seem to meld into the forest scene, growing like snow-coated vegetation in a wood.

In another photograph we see four human figures and a dog walking along a tree-canopied lane in the snow. The figures, like the street lamps and trees, are ghostly, insubstantial, as if ready to be absorbed and annihilated by the thick fog of snow. Here the wilderness seems to envelop and overpower humankind; the essential oneness of nature and manman’s total dependence on, and helplessness before, nature, even in the heart of a great metropolis of glass and steelis potently conveyed.

In addition to an essay by Marie Winn, author and journalist, and a preface by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, President of the Central Park Conservancy, the book includes anecdotal notes by Bruce Davidson himself. An important insight gained from these notes is that crafting memorable portraits of people requires a lot of interaction and tremendous social skills. Many photographers find it necessary to build trust with their subjects, so that the latter feel comfortable being photographed and exhibiting themselves naturally and spontaneously before the camera. But as Davidson reveals, developing this trust often requires extraordinary dedication and patience.

Every evening, Davidson prepares “three wrapped cheese sandwiches for the homeless” for his next day in the park. As he walks, he strikes up conversations with the people he encounters: old women feeding ducks, dog-walkers and bird-watchers, the homeless collecting trash and sprawling on the grass. Davidson strikes up lasting friendships with some of them, takes them for coffee, gives them gifts, and returns to photograph them again and again. This trust that requires so much time and effort to build and sustain is often a fragile thing. Davidson had a four-year rapport with an elderly woman and committed bird-feeder who helped him photograph the birds on the condition that he never take her picture. Once, in a momentary lapse, Davidson pointed his camera at the womanand she never spoke to him again.

These frustrations and disappointments, though, are just part of the job. Photography, like any art, is intensely demanding, and Davidson is driven to it by an artist’s thirst for truth in representation. In Davidson’s words: “There’s a truth about Central Park I’m trying to uncover.” His quest, as Marie Winn writes, is to “penetrate the secret life of the park.” And it must be said that in the photos collected in Central Park, Davidson succeeds admirably well.

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hii Posted by: j77711 Apr 6, 2008 @ 11:4 AM EST

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