Speaking to us about how he views the project today, Davidson reiterates this sentiment: “I feel that there was a passion and a purpose to photographing in the subway. It received plenty of critical acclaim both as a document showing the unique moment in the societal fabric in New York City as well as its phenomenal use of extremes of shadow and color set against flash-lit skin. Davidson is also famous for "East 100th street" (Andrew Roth, The Book of 101 Books, page 196/197; Martin Parr, Gerry Badger, The Photobook, volume 1, page 18). In this third edition of what is now a classic of photographic literature, a sequence of 118 (including 25 previously unpublished) images transport the viewer through a landscape at times menacing, and at other times lyrical and soulful.

His initial expeditions into the subways were hindered by the fears of attack from street urchins, as he was seen as a tourist with expensive equipment in the most dangerous neighborhood of the city.He began photographing the traffic islands lining up Broadway, which, according to him, have always fascinated him. Celebrating a recent gift from the collection of Wanda and Cam Garner, this exhibition presents a range of colorful, visceral, and surprisingly intimate portraits of passengers taken during a notoriously dangerous time in New York City. They seem so fearless, but when you read his own statements about this project, he does not sound much different than any of us would probably feel.

In Davidson’s own words, “the people in the subway, their flesh juxtaposed against the graffiti, the penetrating effect of the strobe light itself, and even the hollow darkness of the tunnels, inspired an aesthetic that goes unnoticed by passengers who are trapped underground, hiding behind masks, and closed off from each other.

I revisited the Lower East Side cafeteria where I’d photographed several years before… The cafeteria was a haven for the elderly Jewish people surviving the decaying nearby neighborhoods. In 1980 he captured the vitality of the New York Metro s underworld that was later published in his book Subway and exhibited at the International Center for Photography in 1982. Davidson had an intimate style, and he often embedded himself closely with his subjects to complete his projects. His mornings started with him packing his cameras, strobe light, lenses, filters, and accessories in a small canvas bag.

Many were willing, enthusiastic even, about showcasing the realities of the subway system, but, with his expensive camera slung round his neck, Davidson also fell victim to attacks and muggings. After a solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1963, Davidson spent two years photographing in Harlem, resulting in the book East 100th Street. He familiarized himself with a smaller area, and used that to tell a much larger story, due to the intimacy with his subjects. Still, within it, the photographer communicates an increasingly widespread sense of solidarity between the inhabitants of the subterranean – there is harmony within the underground malaise. Support for this exhibition is provided by an anonymous donor, the members of The San Diego Museum of Art, and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Program.

As I went down the subway stairs, through the turnstile, and on to the darkened station platform, a sense of fear gripped me. Every now and then, when I was looking at one of these cryptic messages, someone would come and sit in front of it, and I would feel as if the message had been decoded. Color photography was not new for me – most of my commissioned work and all of my films have been done in color. Thus, in the subway, Davidson resists the itch to take the gritty high-contrast black and white portraits common during that time and used purposefully to convey emotions.

Davidson’s accompanying text tells the story behind the images, clarifying his method and dramatizing his experience. One day I spotted this young man on the subway train at Coney Island who absorbed so much bright sun he appeared to be radiant. Disrupting the closed off realm of riders who captured his eye was a central part of Davidson’s process: “if they said, ‘Yes’, it was yes; if they said, ‘No,’ then I knew it was no forever.I often approached people in these densely packed trains, and sometimes they would tell me their life stories, or intimate details that I knew no one else knew. Só nao ganhou cinco estrelas porque tem algumas fotos que são "normais", e poderiam ter ficado tranquilamente de fora da obra. Subway is Davidson's visceral take on the New York underground system of the 1980s complete with beleagured passengers, Guardian Angels, graffiti and a palpable, all-pervasive sense of fear. In this edition of classic photographic literature, a sequence of 118 images move the viewer through a landscape at times menacing, and at other times lyrical, soulful, and satiric. We were all in the same boat and I was just expressing the everyday occurrences in the subway at that point in 1980.