A chronological retrospective of Bruce Davidson’s rich and wide-ranging career, The Way Back (Steidl, 2025) is a compilation of 128 unpublished photographs taken between 1957 to 1992. Presenting decades of unseen images, including from his seminal bodies of work, the photobook affirms Davidson’s ability to listen with his lens, showcasing his insatiable interest in humanity and the forces that drive the human spirit.
Photographs included from his in-depth portrait of a 1950s “Brooklyn Gang,” his 1958 project “Circus,” his chronicling of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama and Washington D.C., and his glimpse into the lives of residents on Harlem’s East 100th Street, are testaments to Davidson’s compassionate engagement with people who were otherwise silenced or unheard.
From his lifelong fascination with New York City to his reportage of Welsh coal miners, Davidson’s The Way Back examines how we inhabit the world, and the strata of human emotion that inhabit us. As Davidson approaches his 92nd birthday, the book offers a celebration of his life behind the lens.
At the age of 25 in 1958, the year he became a full member at Magnum, Davidson went to the Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey to photograph the Clyde Beatty Circus. It was the beginning of what would become “Circus,” a body of work documenting the slow wane of the big top enterprise. The Way Back presents new images of trapeze artists, clowns and animals performing in the ring, and their solitary moments behind the scenes. Jimmy Armstrong, a man with dwarfism who worked as a clown, was one of Davidson’s most emotionally-charged subjects.
“We became friends, although we seldom spoke to one another,” Davidson said. Capturing Armstrong’s loneliness, the mockery he faced, and the family he found in the circus, Davidson exposed a sense of solitude in both the individual and society at large, as it faced rapid technological change.
The following year in 1959, with the help of a social worker, Davidson documented The Jokers, a Brooklyn gang whose turbulent adolescence was marked by drug use, street violence and a search for value in a world which tried to control them. The Way Back finally brings to light unseen images from “Brooklyn Gang” of the rebellious — and misunderstood — youth.
Davidson followed the group for a year on their everyday rituals — loitering in the candy shop, getting tattoos, flirting with girls, and patrolling the streets. “This was our block, I mean we owned the block. Nobody could tell us what to do or how to do it or anything like that,” recalled Bengie, a former member of The Jokers.
Just 15 years old at the time, Bengie and his friends had to navigate post-war poverty, the rigid codes of Catholic school, and a patriarchal family structure rife with alcohol. Always unintrusive and mindful, Davidson captured the gang’s vulnerability and struggles with self-worth that ultimately led to drug addiction. Yet the presence of Davidson’s lens was able to evoke an authenticity in Bengie: “When Bruce would take a picture of me, I would just stay in the spot that I was in, I would never fake it.”
Davidson’s decades-long immersion in the soul of New York City resonates throughout The Way Back, which features images of his decades-long Central Park project and black-and-white takes from his series “Subway,” immortalizing the gritty, decrepit subway system in the early 1980s, where all walks of life assembled in the run-down, crowded trains.
What surfaces throughout The Way Back is one of Davison’s quintessential characteristics: the steady gaze of the subject directly at the camera. Unlike many documentary and street photographers at the time, Davidson allowed his subjects to look at him, and therefore at us, rather than catch them unaware or try to be invisible. This deliberate breaking of the fourth wall is at once surprising and magnetic; we are invited to look into the subject’s eyes in a humanistic exchange. As Davidson describes in reference to his project “East 100th Street”: “I didn’t want to be the unobserved observer. I wanted to be with my subjects face to face.”
Featuring rare color images from “East 100th Street,” The Way Back revisits Davidson’s Harlem series — yet another testament to his sincerity and willingness to share the company of strangers, to be receptive to their inner lives without any hint of otherization. He hoped his images would help push politicians to improve Harlem’s dire living situations and neglected tenement housing. When photographing the east Harlem residents, Davidson extended his consideration to his technique: “The presence of a large format camera on a tripod, with its bellows and black focusing cloth, gave a sense of dignity to the act of taking pictures,” he said.
The photobook also revisits Davidson’s scope of experience abroad, where he captured villagers on scooters in Sicily and the lives of coal miners in Wales.
In America’s segregated south, Davidson focused on one of the century’s most pivotal revolutions: the Civil Rights Movement. Alabama was a hotbed of civil rights activity and tension in the 1960s; the first freedom rides and peaceful marches led by civil rights activists were faced with violent reactions from the police and white residents. Davidson was there to capture the non-violent resilience of Black activists and white allies, eventually leading to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The Way Back is an homage to Davidson’s quiet intelligence, his inimitable artistic presence throughout the second half of the 20th century, and his earnest curiosity towards the human experience.