Danny Lyon: Conversations with the Dead
Danny Lyon
Phaidon, London, 2015
€59,95
Danny Lyon (born in Brooklyn in 1942, lives and works in New York State) is widely considered a significant representative of the artistic and literary movement New Journalism that emerged in the US in the 1960s and ‘70s. Since Lyon photographed the American Civil Rights Movement in the early ‘60s, he addresses issues of social justice and the judicial system of the United States through photography. Conversations with the Dead (1967-69), a series of more than 70 images, is Lyon’s first examination of the American prison system and poignantly portrays the everyday life of prison inmates in the Southern States.
In 1967, the then 25-year-old Danny Lyon was given unrestricted permission to photograph the convict life in Texas. According to the principles of New Journalism, which called for the photographer to immerse himself in the living conditions of the death row inmates, Lyon spent fourteen months moving freely among six prison units, where he became friends with prisoners and documented his experience through photography and writing. The result of this journey is a series of images that testify to the artist’s ambition to break away from an objective photojournalistic approach. Instead, due to the close contact of artist and inmates, Danny Lyon’s photographs are marked by a high degree of emotionality and subjectivity. His emphatic investigation of life in prison results in an unprejudiced portrait of real people who society pays hardly any attention to.
ISBN: 9780030850691
