Image of the DayCouple by Jukebox in Social Club, 1966 — a photograph by Bruce Davidson, from his East 100th Street series. In 1967 and '68, Davidson extensively photographed the residents and environs of one particular block of Spanish Harlem which had a reputation for being one of the worst in the city, but was actively being improved by the block's residents. The photographs were exhibited in 1970 at the Museum of Modern Art in a groundbreaking show; curator John Szarkowski wrote that Davidson had "shown us true and specific people, photographed in these private moments of suspended action in which the complexity and ambiguity of individual lives triumph over abstraction." Davidson gave prints of his photographs to hundreds of residents of the block, and many of them attended the opening at MoMA.
The exact prints from that exhibition are on view today through January 2nd, 2010, at Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York. [Many of the photographs were also shown in 2003 at Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle.]
A simultaneous exhibition of Bruce Davidson's photography opens tomorrow at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery.