This is the first New York gallery exhibition of the work of David Bradford.

Bradford reached international acclaim with the publication Drive By Shootings (Konemann) in 2000. A New York City taxi driver by trade, Bradford has developed his practice behind the wheel of his cab, shooting New York’s streets for the past fifteen years. His latest works are 15-second videos or “Blasts” as he calls them, captured with a cell phone camera. Bradford will present a selection of 120 films, on three screens grouped into separate presentations: “Wednesday and Thursday Blasts”, “Saturday and Sunday Blasts” and “Friday and Monday Blasts.”

Following the publication of “Drive By Shootings,” Bradford began looking for new ways to expand his repertoire. A chance encounter, led him to embrace the new technology of the cell phone video camera. These cameras enable him to capture 15 seconds of images, as opposed to the brief flash of the camera shutter. A decidedly low-resolution camera in a high-tech medium, Bradford’s blasts capture impressionistic moments of New York City street life, ever fluid and in motion. The films are augmented with the incidental music of the radio playing in his cab at the moment of filming and no-post production manipulation is ever involved. Taken individually, or as a whole, Bradford’s films return photography to both an earlier era, of the open eye, and a future moment, of high-technology. As camera’s are reduced in size and become ever more ubiquitous in today’s world, we are less and less likely in the rush of our lives to actually see what’s before us. Shooting from behind the wheel of his cab, Bradford’s camera becomes a portal through which we can see the world as it is, a herky-jerky flux of unstable and random events, laced with old songs and new. Bradford’s New York, as captured in his Blasts is both familiar and unanticipated, with the recognizable and the abstract merging at once in his images.

David Bradford moved to New York in 1978 with a degree in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design, and worked for a decade as Art Director of Saks Fifth Avenue. In 1990, he left his job in order to focus on independent and freelance projects and began driving a cab to support himself. Over the first 3 years behind the wheel, Bradford began taking photographs and dedicated himself, beginning in 1993 to the creation of his personal portrait of the city.