 Gary Sampson of the Cleveland Institute of Art lists Davidson alongside Danny Lyon and Diane Arbus as photographers who reacted to Robert Frank’s European perspective in "The Americans" with a ‘hip’ ‘insider’ investigation of U.S. subcultures pervaded by a sombre angst.He points to Nathan Lyons' characterisation of this trend as ‘social landscape’ in Lyon's curation of the 1966 George Eastman House "Toward a Social Landscape.