Central Park. New York City, USA, 1992

Working in New York City’s Central Park for over four years, Bruce Davidson made images of the vibrant life and activities that take place in the well-loved green space. The Magnum photographer and New York resident captured youthful play, rendezvous-ing couples, and city dwellers at rest in the park.
Through Davidson’s photographs, we can observe how the park opens its hospitable, generous heart to the city, offering temporary refuge for those without shelter, privacy for the lover, a setting for the newlywed, nesting space and food for the newly hatched, a circle of sunlight for the wheelchair-bound, and all of outdoors for energetic youthfulness. In Davidson’s work, we discover the park to be a great theatre of human, animal, and vegetal life — a place where nature and humanity interact and in the process, become mutually transformed.