At 25 Bruce Davidson read about the gang and wanted to capture the spirit of youth in New York after the war. Davidson contacted a social worker who was in touch with a gang called The Jokers. “They were 15, 16 year old, Polish and Irish kids. They were abandoned, there was nothing for them, there was nothing for them, they came from alcoholic families.”
Davidson always takes the time to gain peoples trust before photographing them – for him photography gives him the opportunity to contact and connect with people. Over the 11 months of working with the gang they began to trust him more and more and let him see everything; a moment of rage, sadness, happiness, drinking down back alleys, dancing on the boardwalk, everything. He was a daily observer – “they treated me like an invisible man, I was a shadow.”
Davidson didn’t want to focus on the violence of this gang, but instead, to capture the human element of these teens as well as highlighting their depression. “I think that when I photograph I have to feel empathetic. I have to feel that I belong. And they needed to be seen. No one was looking at them; no one was observing them. I could identify with that emotion in myself at the time. I could grab hold of part of that isolation. And even within that isolation, I found beauty and their vitality.”
Beth Harvey 