THE PRIVATE EYE & THE PUBLIC EYE
2016-03-21Photographs by Bruce Davidson and Miroslav Tichy´ are so different that they cast an eerie light on each other. Davidson has been a member of the elite photographers’ cooperative Magnum for nearly 60 years and has published numerous projects, including Brooklyn Gang. Tichy´, on the other hand, was an obscure artist working in his native Czechoslovakia during, primarily, the Soviet occupation. A promising young painter when the Soviets took over in 1948, in 1957 he had a breakdown that ended his painting career. Thereafter he became an eccentric, perhaps delusional character who walked the streets with a camera hand-crafted out of wood, paper-tubing and other odd parts that made most people think it didn’t even have film in it.
That said, the difference between his work and Davidson’s throws into relief the range of human needs that photography can satisfy. Davidson’s work is rigorously objective in its viewpoint. He’s documented the relationships of couples for the most part, including both women and the men they’re with. The result is a record of the relationship between the sexes of a certain class at a specific time in history.
Opposite – Brooklyn Gang, (girl standing in door of phone booth, boy making fist), 1959, Bruce Davidson
Exhibition runs through till April 30th, 2016
Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 East 57th Street
Suite 1406
New York
NY 10022
