There, and Back Again – “Bruce Davidson/Paul Caponigro: Two American Photographers in Britain and Ireland”

Two acclaimed photographers, both now in their early 80s, Bruce Davidson (b.1933) and Paul Caponigro (b.1932), had never met until this generous exhibition of their work opened at the Yale Center for British Art earlier this year. Now it’s a lot closer, in San Marino, through March 9.

There are similarities, and major differences, in each man’s approach to photography, and thus the work on view complements rather than mirrors itself. However, both artists studied or were mentored by masters of the genre during the 1950s, both work in nuanced black-and-white, and both were drawn to the British Isles during the 1960s.

Bruce Davidson

Bruce Davidson was raised in suburban Chicago, and drawn to the work of Robert Frank (“The Americans”) and Henri Cartier-Bresson (“The Decisive Moment”), as well as the “Life” magazine imagery of W. Eugene Smith. At Yale, Davidson studied drawing and color theory with Josef Albers. Then Uncle Sam intervened and he was sent, briefly, to Georgia and Arizona, and then – bingo! – to a Paris suburb in 1956. While there he was able to arrange a meeting with Cartier-Bresson, whose ideas and working methods had made a lasting impression and is evident in the pictures that Davidson took in 1960 when “The Queen” magazine gave him a two-months-long photo assignment.

The impression one gets is that Davidson was an outsider or uninvolved observer during this initial trip, because his work seems impromptu and on-the-fly; he rarely seems to interact with his subjects (then again, that’s its similarity to Cartier-Bresson and Frank). After a couple of weeks he found London too stifling and headed out of the busy city. “In the end,” Jennifer Watts writes in the catalogue for the show, “Davidson reflected that the trip had been less travelogue and more ‘personal quest’ in a country steeped in history.”

However, when Davidson returned to Britain in 1965 he engaged more directly with the people he photographed. As Scott Wilcox notes, also in the catalogue, “There is more posing, and a more stage-managed quality to how the shots are set up.” And, in 1967, Davidson was back in Ireland, this time on assignment to cover the circus of James Duffy & Sons.

Paul Caponigro

Paul Capronigro, on the other hand, originally intended to go to Egypt, to photograph the pyramids and temples, but was apparently talked out of it because of then-current anti-Americanism. He may have been disappointed at first, I don’t know, but the British Isles and its storied history soon enchanted him.

Actually, fate itself had earlier sent Caponigro in a direction different than what he might have chosen on his own. “Still a teenager,” says Watts, “he had pared his existence down to three essentials: music, photography, and nature.” Enter Uncle Sam (again!), and Caponigro (who’d grown up in Boston) found himself in San Francisco. Within a short time he was drawn into the orbit of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Minor White and others. But then the Army packed him off to Arizona. “To his great surprise,” Watts tells us, “he found that the quiet, open spaces of the desert suited him.” (Years later he’d spend almost two decades in nearby Santa Fe, although he now lives in Maine)

Well, just as Bruce Davidson had the mentoring friendship of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paul Caponigro had Minor White.

“By 1959,” Watts says, “Caponigro was driving cross-country with Minor White in a black Chevrolet van, headed for Oregon to teach a workshop, the two artists discussing metaphysics and making photographs along the way.”

A few years later, Caponigro found himself with a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1966 he was off to Ireland with his family on a quest to explore and photograph Celtic art and architecture. He found dolmens, cairns, tumuli – and he found Stonehenge. The latter called him back several times, and his images of the site have an intimacy that we rarely associate with objects of this scale.

If Davidson focused on the human element in the city or in the landscape, Caponigro does not. You’d almost think that his landscapes were completely deserted, except for some occasional wildlife: Caponigro’s “Running White Deer, Wicklow, Ireland” (1967) captures the fleeting and ghostly creatures against a backdrop of dark foliage, and in a sense the mystery that hovers around this picture is part and parcel with the ethereal and the sacred that resonates from many of his other images.

I don’t know if he ever made it over to Egypt, but Caponigro returned to the United Kingdom over a dozen times, often for weeks, sometimes for months.

Had both photographers shot in color I imagine that this would be a very different show, and if they’d engaged with “the swinging ‘60s” it might have turned into something else entirely. But Davidson was there a little too early for that, and Caponigro probably wouldn’t have cared anyway. What we do have is compelling work by two solitary travelers who found themselves through the images they captured. They certainly learned from and absorbed what their noted predecessors taught them, and in turn their visions and sensibilities will inspire others. They will certainly inspire those who engage with and embrace this remarkable show.

Bruce Davidson/Paul Caponigro: Two American Photographers in Britain and Ireland is on view through March 9 at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. Be sure to view the accompanying 16-minute film, Still Looking, by Kate Lain. Hours, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday from 12 noon to 4:30 p.m., and Saturday, Sunday, and Monday holidays from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Admission varies, with discounts for seniors and students. (626) 405-2100 or go to huntington.org.