Untitled, Time of Change (Two Women at Lunch Counter)

Bruce Davidson is an influential artist who has been taking photos since he was ten years old. He attended Rochester Institute of Technology and then Yale University, and later was drafted into the US Army. In 1957 he became a freelance photographer for LIFE magazine, and a year 7later, a fulltime photographer for Magnum. Davidson is well known for the photographic series The Dwarf, Brooklyn Gang, and Freedom Riders. He brings his subjects to life by becoming a part of the subculture he is documenting. In 1962, he was granted a Guggenheim fellowship to focus on the Civil Rights movement. This series, Time of Change, was done with an urgent energy and puts the viewer in uncomfortably close situations of racial dispute. The image Two Women at Lunch Counter has a subtle undertone of disgust shown on the woman’s face on the right, while the woman on the left of the image is making eye contact and confronting the tension.