Danny Lyon

Danny Lyon (born March 16, 1942 in Brooklyn , New York City , USA ) is an American photographer and documentary filmmaker .

Life

Lyon grew up as the child of Jewish parents in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens in New York . He studied history at the University of Chicago , where he graduated in 1963 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA). In the same year he worked as a photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). His photos appeared in the documentary book The Movement , which describes the civil rights movement in the southern United States.

In 1968 Lyons first published The Bikeriders . Since he himself was a member of the Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club , took rides with them and adopted their lifestyle, he was able to try very carefully to capture and glorify the lifestyle of American bikers. In 1969, in his photo book The Destruction of Lower Manhattan, he described the effects of land speculation and new buildings on the image of old Manhattan .

In the 1970s, Lyon worked as a photographer for the US Environmental Protection Agency . He published his photographs from 1967 and 1968 in six prisons in Texas , which he had taken in collaboration with the state prison administration, in the photo book Conversations with the Dead in 1971 .

Lyon's photographic style is counted as part of New Journalism , in which the photographer sees himself as a participant in the documented situations and facts. He is the director of a number of documentaries.

"Boys playing frisbee across West 46th Street in Manhattan New York City," July 1974

Prizes and awards

• 1969: Guggenheim scholarship in photography
• 1979: Guggenheim grant in the field of film

Exhibitions

• Whitney Museum of American Art , Manhattan, New York City, USA
• Art Institute of Chicago , Chicago , Illinois , USA
• Menil Collection , Houston , Texas , USA
• 1991: Danny Lyon: Photo, Film , Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona , Arizona , USA, catalog

Publications

• Conversations with the Dead. Letters and Drawings of Billy McCune # 122054 , Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York City 1971.
• Memories of myself. Essays, Phaidon, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-7148-4851-8 .
• The Bikeriders . Aperture, New York City, USA 2014, ISBN 978-1-597112642 .

literature

• Exhibition catalog: Danny Lyon: Photo, Film . Museum Folkwang, Essen et al., Essen 1991, Braus edition, Heidelberg 1992, ISBN 3-925835-76-8 .

Web links

• Website of the photographer (English)
• Danny Lyon in the Internet Movie Database (English)