Fantastic and thought-provoking American photographer Bruce Davidson recently received the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award at this year’s Sony World Photography Awards in London, acknowledging a lifetime of photographic excellence and important documentation of the Civil Rights Movement. His celebrated work — one of his photographs was famously used for the cover of the Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication, plus, you know, he got a Guggenheim — is incredibly humanizing and beautiful, and Davidson seems to see his subjects as they see themselves, allowing the viewer to move among the images undetected. Click through to see a few of our favorite photographs from the World Photography Organization exhibit, and check out his Magnum Photos page or the 2010 book of Davidson’s work, Outside Inside , for more.
Kathy and Arty at the Ocean Time Bar, Coney Island, 1959
Lefty showing his first tattoo, Brooklyn, 1959
East 100th Street. New York City, 1966-1968
Bengie at luncheonette, Brooklyn 1959
Led by Martin Luther King Jr., a group of Civil Rights demonstrators march from Sema to Montgomery to fight for black suffrage. Selma, Alabama, 1965
Arrest of a demonstrator, Birmingham, Alabama 1963
East 100th Street. New York City, 1966-1968
Coney Island, 1959
East 100th Street. New York City, 1966-1968
Lovers in the Ramble, Central Park. New York, 1992-1995
