Photographer Bruce Davidson spent the summer of 1959 documenting a Brooklyn gang called the Jokers. While the 50s are often remembered in an idealized state of less violence and wholesome (white) culture, his series shows a different side of alienated youth in New York. Davidson wasn't much older than them the summer he spent in their company and the gang accepted his presence--making his pictures go beyond their tough facade to their darker, more personal moments. They are tough and confused, innocent and wise beyond their years; adolescents struggling through the world. It also shows the need to forge community; it's clear these teens were finding a family that they had been otherwise denied. The series was reprinted in 1999 with an extended afterword by a surviving member of the gang, called Bengie, who recounts his memories of drug abuse, knife fights, and suicide by one of the members. Davidson's photographs are charged with that raw emotion and carry as much punch today as they must have in a time before the term "inner city youth culture" existed.
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