Bruce Davidson: Central Park
Out-of-town visitors may think that Central Park is off-limits, that it is full of, not necessarily lions and tigers and bears, but at least bandits, which may be true at 3 a.m.; however, in daylight hours, Manhattanites of all persuasions flock to this beloved green space, to make love, jog, watch and be watched, lie scantily clothed in the sun, or, unfortunately in some cases, set up housekeeping under a cardboard roof. Activities find certain limitations in winter, but some of the most arresting shots in this black-and-white album of what people do in Central Park, by an exceptionally talented and much-exhibited photographer, were taken against winter's blanket of snow. No chamber-of-commerce glorifying of city life here, but no unfair disparagement of it, either--Davidson's sharply focused photographs speak of a love of the diversity of human preoccupation and of the wonderful irony inherent in the very fact of Central Park's existence: that woods and meadows and ponds occur in the midst of one of the world's most intense urban areas. Any reader with an eye for evocative photography, particularly of the nuance of texture that only the black-and-white medium can achieve, will enjoy Davidson's photos.Brad Hooper