| Maker(s): | Davidson, Bruce
| | Culture: | American (1933 - )
| | Title: | Title Page for portfolio Welsh Miners
| | Date Made: | 1982
| | Type: | Print
| | Materials: | letterpress on brown paper
| | Measurements: | sheet (folded): 11 in x 18 in; 27.94 cm x 45.72 cm
| | Narrative Inscription: | on last page, printed: The portfolio is limited to seventy numbered / sets plus five artist's proofs. Prior to the printing of this / portfolio, the artist has printed the photographs included in / it, singly, and reserves the right to do so in the future, should / he wish. Lynn Martin designed the portfolio. Scriptorium / Bookbinding produced the archival case. The portfolio is / published by Douglas Kenyon, In. & Tackfield, Ltd., 1982. / Portfolio Number / 60 [underlined]
| | Accession Number: | SC 2011.45
| | Credit Line: | Gift of Florence Rothman, class of 1956, and Noel Rothman
| | Museum Collection: | Smith College Museum of Art
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Description:
brown folded portfolio title page, text on front: WELSH MINERS / BRUCE DAVIDSON, text inside: In 1965, on assignment to photograph castles in Wales for / Holiday Magazine, Bruce Davidson felt the pull of another subject / matter, another Wales. Through the intercession of a Welsh / friend he put himself in the way of proud and shy coal miners, / children at inscrutable games, and bucolic scenes at the edge / of a stark stone village. Within his own development, the / Wales photographs are a remarkable moment. They are a still / and almost trance-like sequence of tableaux, in which the pho- / tographer, while utterly in the thrall of his subject and its mood, / yet controls the stage and its effects, and maintains sympathetic / contact with his collaborators. In these pictures Bruce Davidson / is the enchanted wizard, the wizard enthralled. The ability to / enter so sympathetically into what seems superficially an alien / environment remains Bruce Davidson's sustained triumph. In his / investigations he becomes the friendly recorder of a tenderness / and tragedy we could never share where it not for Bruce's / amiable obstinacy. It is his ability to cut to the crux in still / photographs that in their inevitable sequence, lead to a mov- / ing portrait specific in time and place, of an aspect of the / human condition, never patronizing, always lived and shared. / Henry Geldzahler / 1 December 1981
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+2011.45 |
