Davidson photographs people on an eye-to-eye level, portraying and inducing powerful emotion, while focusing his lens on people in the midst of transition and a search for meaning.
In all of Davidson’s works, instead of objectifying his subjects—as objects of pity, subjects of curiosity, or specimens for analysis—he humanizes them, portraying them with a sense of vigor and vitality, as we are given insight to their lives, struggles, and desires.In particular, Davidson often documents the human search for meaning among people who face potentially ruinous social obstacles and economic strife. This type of documentation is especially evident in East 100th Street, Brooklyn Gang, and Davidson’s Civil Rights Era photography.
He induces and portrays powerful emotion in all of his major works;emotions such as loneliness, despair, love, determination, and uncertainty, while his realism induces social concern and sympathy for complete strangers.
Davidson is skilled at documenting people or subjects in transition, whether rebellious teenagers coming of age, persecuted people fighting for equality, the urban poor amid soon-to-be demolished tenements, a gritty underworld soon to be sterilized, a traveling circus soon to be disbanded, or the passage of the seasons amid the magnificence, grandeur, and human heartache evident within Central Park.
Davidson creates an expression of the human condition by capturing his diverse subjects and settings in a personal and lyrical visual language, as he is able to transcend race, culture, and background, thereby uniting all his subjects in a shared poetic human experience.He allows us to see both beauty and pieces of ourselves in wide ranges of people. Through Davidson’s works we see how everyone shares similar experiences, how we are all united, and therefore how everyone can truly relate to one another.
