Bevan Davies New York Typologies

Bevan Davies

New York Typologies             

Joseph Bellows Gallery is pleased to open the fall season with the work of Bevan Davies. Bevan Davies: New York Typologies will feature vintage black and white photographs of lower Manhattan made in the mid-1970s. Davies utilized a large-format view camera to generate images of great depth and clarity, pursuing an approach to documenting the urban landscape of the Empire City that the late photographer Lewis Baltz described as “rigorously contemporary while acknowledging a use of the camera which dates from the inception of the medium.” This exhibition will showcase varying aspects of the city’s architecture, presenting serial images devoted to these cast-iron edifices.

Bevan Davies’ large-scale ferrotype* prints flawlessly mirror the illuminated surfaces of Gotham’s doorways, storefronts, and facades. Davies writes of his approach as “an effort being made to let the camera almost see by itself.”  These New York facades, taken in the early morning hours, describe the architectural subjects frontally and are defined by the chiaroscuro of the building.

In his introduction to Davies’ book, New York 1975, published by Nazraeli Press, Joshua Chuang, (then, the Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Associate Director for Art, Prints and Photographs, and The Robert B. Menschel, Senior Curator of Photography at The New York Public Library), observed:

“When first exhibited in 1976, their formal austerity and apparently neutral stance invited comparison with the contemporaneous work of Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, and other photographers featured in the seminal 'New Topographics' exhibition. Distance, however, has revealed their concerns and temperament to be more akin to those of Marville or Atget, both of whom had a special feeling for the life and death of buildings (and thus of place), or Walker Evans, whose pictures Lincoln Kirstein praised for their “clear, hideous and beautiful detail, their open insanity and pitiful grandeur.”  

Davies’ sense of the urban landscape is furthered by the astute and rhythmic organization of his subject within the ground glass of his camera. His photographs both survey and celebrate the urban landscape, allowing traces of its inhabitants to inform the architecture and metropolitan spaces, revealing the everyday poetry of the city.

Bevan Davies (American, 1941 -  ) studied humanities at the University of Chicago in the early 1960s.  After moving to New York, he continued his studies with Bruce Davidson in his New York studio, where he met Mary Ellen Mark, Diane Arbus, Ralph Gibson, and Danny Lyon.  Davies' first New York exhibition was held at Witkin Gallery in 1969. Sonnabend Gallery featured Davies' work in solo and group exhibitions in their SoHo gallery in the mid and late 1970s. During this period, Davies' work was also exhibited at Larry Gagosian’s Broxton Gallery in Westwood, CA and internationally at Galerie Wilde, Cologne, at Stills Gallery in Edinburgh, and in group exhibitions of American contemporary photography at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; George Eastman House: Ringling Museum of Art: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania; and the La Jolla Art Museum.

From a 1978 New York Times review of the best photo shows of 1978: Bevan Davies, at Sonnabend Gallery

"Bevan Davies, another photographer with something to say, was the most promising newcomer of the year. His subject is classical architecture in New York City, but his large and beautiful compositions go beyond the specifics of particular buildings to evoke the calm and noble spirit of the classical style itself.”  - Gene Thornton

Bevan Davies’ work can be found in numerous public and private collections, including the New York Public Library, J. Paul Getty Museum, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Center for Creative Photography, George Eastman Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Black Dog Collection, among others. 

Monographs on Davies’ work include Los Angeles, 1976 (Nazraeli Press, 2014), and New York 1975 (Nazraeli Press, 2017). His work was included in the survey exhibition catalog, Ed Rusha and Some Los Angeles Apartments (Getty, 2013).  Recently his work was featured in Geoff Dyer’s collection of essays on photography entitled, See/Saw (Graywolf Press, 2021).

*A process to produce a high gloss on gelatin silver photographic prints by drying the print with its emulsion in contact with a polished plate.