Excerpt
Foreword
Susan White
Photography Director
Vanity Fair
I first met David more than 10 years ago and he struck me then as a man on a quest. He seemed a seeker, of sorts, out to answer his lifeand#8217;s questions by turning his lens on others yes, not a vapid expression among them. I remember thinking that I was meeting a man and a photographer not quite content with the making of beautiful imagery, a photographer who might be looking for something beyond the world of commercial photography. David certainly made a journey; through life and around the world. Itand#8217;s what we see now in this very personal body of work.
Travellers of all sorts inevitably face the need to choose their path and eventually reckon with roads taken and those ignored. Spaced throughout these pages are pictures of real roads of great distance that speak metaphorically to us about our own journeys as well as to Davidand#8217;s real trek. He brings our gaze deep into the horizon, reminding us how difficult it is to see the end from the beginning; that the backward glance may be a bit more crystal clear than the forward-looking eye, which tempts us to sometimes observe without really seeing. The first page of this wonderful book of photographs gives us an early sense of where we are going as viewers and travelling companions into Davidand#8217;s world. Marie MacDonald, of the Committee of Social Service, made more than a prediction in a letter that serves as this bookand#8217;s introduction when she suggests that David, soon to be adopted, should be and#147;dressed for the journeyand#8221;.
And itand#8217;s his journeyand#8221; that David turns over to us here. By looking so honestly at his subjects, he invites them to return his gaze, risking self - discovery in the reflection of an eye. Whether he finds that self there or at the end of one of those long roads heand#8217;s travelled is, of course, a private matter. What heand#8217;s sharing with us, though, is the unflinching response he pulls out of his subjects, all of whom look back at us assuming common ground. But itand#8217;s not just people that lure David, itand#8217;s the physical world of where they are that also reels him in. In turn, he takes us there, too; whether heand#8217;s looking at an imposing mountain crag with an almost human face or the unique geometry of an exotic rooftop. He treats fabric as if itand#8217;s stone and turns a rock formation into a billowing, fluid ream of striped cloth. Reeds in a pond; unraveled yarn in red, yellow and blue or worn, wooden floor planks become abstracted images distilled into line, colour and form. There are plain, weathered walls that match some of the faces he documents in these pages; some famous, many not, all compelling.
David left a crisp outline of himself behind after our meeting in my office all those years ago and I never forgot him. Iand#8217;m delighted to meet him again in this book, to imagine his travels, to see the people heand#8217;s met and to recognize his legacy not only in his work but in the beautiful face of his daughter, who so gracefully serves as a visual endnote to the photographic journey David shares with us here.