At the MFA: Bruce Davidson shows tenement life with dignity and grace

After more than four decades, Bruce Davidson’s black-and-white photographs of life in a Harlem tenement still smolder with his subjects’ gritty humanity.

For two years in 1966 and 1967, the white Midwesterner lugged his large-format camera almost daily through a single New York City block, chronicling the public and private moments of people who opened their doors and lives to him.

Acquired in 2011 by the Museum of Fine Arts, 43 of these striking photos are now showcased in "Bruce Davidson: East 100th Street.’’

Organized by MFA by Curator of Photography Karen Haas, this revelatory exhibit should shatter enduring stereotypes about poverty, race and inner city blight.

However poor, unhealthy, aged or just unlovely, Davidson saw humans through his lens and photographed them with respect and compassion.

An elderly woman in a floral dress sits on her bed as her laundry dries from hangers on the wall. Leaning their heads together, a serious young couple gazes steadily into the lens.

A young boy flies a kite atop a tenement roof as the East River stretches behind him to the horizon. A muscular shirtless man jives with friends in a basement "shooting gallery’’ for heroin users.

"These tenements might be crumbling but they are teeming with life,’’ said Haas, opening the exhibit last week. "Davidson took to heart what an occupant once told him: Remember, what you call a ghetto, I call my home.’’

Haas said the 43 photos on view at the MFA are the original prints of Davidson’s photos that were displayed in a landmark 1970 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

While not a household name, Davidson emerges through this exhibit as a remarkable craftsman who documented little-seen slices of American life in memorable images.

Born in 1933 in Oak Park, Ill., to a single mother who worked in a factory, Davidson began taking photos as a youngster and developing them in a home dark room.

He served as a photographer in the U.S. Army and befriended photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson while stationed in France. After joining Magnum Photo in 1957, Davidson shot several notable series in a documentary style, including the civil rights movement, a New York street gang and Central Park.

Now in his 70s, Davidson insisted his photos be displayed at the MFA without captions or accompanying text that described the image or circumstances in which they were taken.

This bold yet rewarding provision forces viewers to engage the people in the photos without the comforting – and obfuscating - medium of academic or scholarly explanation.

Instead of first reading "Youths at Stoop Posing with Girlfriends,’’ museum visitors see two couples, nothing like themselves, embracing in front of a dingy building.

Davidson seems to be forcing viewers to confront their own fears and biases about people who look poorer, shabbier and tougher than they do.

Viewers might be surprised that many photos are quite small, sometimes just about 8 by 6 inches, and unusually dark.

Haas said the absence of captions forces viewers "to really look’’ at the image where they’ll discover "how rich in detail and how much information’’ each photo really contains.

A bored young girl sprawls across a mattress, surrounded by four tough guys in a room without furniture except for a Valentine on the wall.

Children play on a fire escape overlooking a garbage- strewn alley. A couple slow dances in front of a jukebox next to an American flag and framed portrait of President Kennedy four years after his death.

These photos make viewers confront their unease about poverty and poor people. Are they victims? Will they overcome? Do they deserve their fate?

Davidson apparently didn’t like to be called a "documentary’’ photographer. Haas said a reviewer once described him as "a slowed down street photographer,’’ which might be closer to the truth.

Rather than "grab’’ surreptitious shots of unwitting subjects, she said Davidson went out of his way to interact with his subjects, seeking their permission and taking a sort of collaborative portraits that suggest complex stories that link viewers to their lives.

In one extraordinary image, Davidson photographed a skinny young girl in shorts, her bony torso leaning against the horizontal railing of a fire escape, her head and tangled hair cocked to a side.

Blink your eyes and this child could be Christ crucified or Saint Sebastian, pierced with arrows.

Or maybe just a skinny Latino child playing on a fire escape.

"Bruce Davidson: East 100th Street"

WHEN: Through Sept. 8

WHERE: Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

INFO: 617-267-9300, www.mfa.org