Unlike Pattersons contemporary work, the series I'm focusing on for Davidson was produced in 1959 and focuses on a Brooklyn Gang. Both Patterson and Davidson have used the same technique in their work, in which they make an initial connection to the gang and then follow them around to document their everyday lives and what they get up to. The series isn't about violence or crime, its more a study of how the individuals felt within the gang. Davidson comments it captures their deep depression, anxiety and fear, but at the same time an incredible vitality. The photographs all feel so natural even though the subject knows there being taken, I think this skill in photography takes a long time to master. This could also be achieved by spending such a long time with the gang, one can see that they became incredibly comfortable with his presence, thus allowing him to photograph them honestly.
This kind of connection and comfort would come from spending a long time with the people photographed, and is evident in both Davidsons and Pattersons work. This doesn't work so well for me because I don't have the same kind of time scale these two photographers had to achieve this. This has started to made me think doing a documentary series on such a specific group in which I infiltrate would be difficult because I don't have enough time to pull it off to the same extent.
