London

Bruce Davidson

1960

A gelatin silver photograph that quietly records an older woman kneeling to clean a luminous marble floor, Davidson using light and composition to dignify unnoticed daily labor.

What strikes you is the small, intimate figure set against a vast, shadowed interior—strong diagonals of light and dark, the wet sheen of the floor and roughness of rags creating a sense of stillness and quiet monumentality.

Part of the postwar humanist documentary tradition, this 1960 image exemplifies Davidson’s empathetic street photography that brought attention to ordinary lives and helped shape later documentary and social-realist approaches in photography.

Palette

Art Terms

Gelatin silverprint (developing-out paper) Photography Documentary photography Street photography Social Realism Figure/ground relationship

Exhibitions

East 100th Street: Photographs by Bruce Davidson

1970

Bruce Davidson

1966

New Photography 3: Paul Graham, Barbara Norfleet, and Thomas Roma

1987

Photographs from the Museum Collection

1958