New York City, 1974 © Joel Meyerowitz
Streets in transformation
To mark Leica’s 100 year jubilee, Barbara Davidson enters into a photographic dialogue with legendary street photographer Joel Meyerowitz. Their works will be on display at the Leica Gallery in Los Angeles, as of February 20.
Selected Leica Galleries are continuing with the jubilee series they are hosting in celebration of Leica’s centenary: in the Los Angeles gallery, a sensitive juxtaposition sees the visual worlds of Barbara Davidson conversing with street photographs by Joel Meyerowitz from the sixties and seventies. Davidson, who is known for her haunting documentary work, spans the arc into the present day. Her photographs, taken from 2020 onwards, reveal an America in a state of transition, and incite a dialogue across five decades of American street photography.
100 years of Leica photography – what do you think about that?
Barbara Davidson: 100 years of Leica photography invites us all to honor and celebrate an incredible archive of images, produced by some of the world’s greatest photographers, and dive into a rich visual history of the world created over the past century. It gives us permission to pause and get reacquainted with a breathtaking body of work created on the frontlines of history.
How has the work of LHOF winners influenced your work?
The Leica Hall of Fame photographer whose work has influenced my photography the most is Henri Cartier-Bresson, the father of photojournalism. I fell in love with reportage after studying his images in my early years as a photographer. I wanted to convey the concept of the “decisive moment” – which is essential to good photography – in my own work, after seeing it so exquisitely in his pictures.
My photographs aim to tell stories about the human condition in an authentic way, and I believe that was the ethos of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work as well. We share a core value of the fundamentals of reportage and make images through a humanist prism.
Barbara Davidson
Which picture from the Joel Meyerowitz selection do you like best and why? Can you describe it briefly?
I love Joel’s photograph of the couple walking down the street, arm in arm, with the steam rising up in front of them. He masterfully organizes the chaos by selectively capturing the decision moment of how the light and shadows interplay with one another. It’s a brilliant find.
Did you immediately have an idea about the project or did you need time to develop your approach?
When I saw Joel’s selection of images from his iconic sixties and seventies street photography series, I immediately thought a clever collaboration would be to select my works from 2020 onwards, to show American life in the present tense.
© Joel Meyerowitz, Paris, France, 1967
I’m mostly inspired by current events, the human condition, social injustice and how they intersect.
Barbara Davidson
What are your pictures/series about?
For this collaboration, my work depicts the current American landscape, photographed through a prism of social injustice. I explore the complicated ways in which inequality, empowerment and hope connect and disconnect in our current cultural landscape. My pictures aim to reveal how the American panorama has evolved and devolved since the 1960s and 70s – the golden era of street photography –, and how people are coexisting 50 years later in a radically changed, but stunningly persistent America.
Which camera did you use and why?
I use the Q3. It’s fast and discreet – the perfect combination for the kind of intimate pictures I make.
How do you think photography has changed over the past decades?
I don’t think the way people “see” has changed over the decades. Personal vision has evolved, but the way photographers craft images has changed dramatically. Joel’s work for this collaboration was created with an analogue camera and I used a digital one. Film has a built-in natural aesthetic, whereas digital photography is more sterile; but the look and feel of an image can be changed in photoshop or lightroom, to become whatever the photographer envisions it to be – if he or she is not encumbered by photojournalism ethics. So a photographer’s process – and post process – has evolved and changed dramatically over the decades.
What opportunities and challenges do you see for the future of photography?
I’m a photojournalist who has lived through seismic changes in the industry over the past 25 years – the biggest being the leap from film to digital photography – and how we transmit our images to editors. The key for me has always been to be open-minded and adaptable to new technology. My creative process is a fluid one. One day I’m using an 8 x 10 analogue camera and the next a digital Leica. So, what do I see for the future of photography? It’s hard to say, but whatever it is I will be embrace it. My urge to create is so deeply rooted to my core that I will adapt no matter.
What role do galleries play in the age of digital media, and specifically for your work?
Galleries and museums are creative sacred spaces – especially in this digital era. It’s important to step away from our cell phones and computers and spend time getting lost in works curated in museums and galleries. My work mostly lives in a digital space, so I look forward to it living large on the walls of the Leica Gallery LA, for the Leica 100 year celebration, and people taking time to look at the full depth of my work instead of swiping past it like we all do on Instagram.
Barbara Davidson
Throughout her career, Barbara Davidson has focused her photojournalism lens on people attempting to maintain their dignity in the face of uncertainty in conflict zones and environmental disasters, with a particular focus on women and children trapped in a culture of American gun violence. She honed her story-telling approach, through multiple assignments over two decades across 58 countries, covering war, humanitarian crisis, and the human condition for the Los Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News, and The Washington Times. Davidson is a Pulitzer Prize and Emmy award-winning photojournalist and twice named International Photographer of the Year by Pictures of the Year international (POYi). In 2020 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent the year traveling across the U.S. making portraits of gunshot survivors using a traditional 8×10 film camera. Born in Montreal, Canada, to Irish immigrant parents, Davidson is based in Los Angeles.
