Danny Lyon
1942 –
The son of European émigrés, self- taught photographer Danny Lyon traveled south to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, in 1962. Working with the civil rights organization for two years, he became its first staff photographer and documented its activities, including sit-ins and marches, as they campaigned across the South for racial equality. In images that combine the unflinching realism of street photographers such as Robert Frank with the intertwining of reporter and participant that marked New Journalism, Lyon helped publicize the group’s efforts and, in the process, produced a visual record of a crucial period in the history of the civil rights movement.
Two SNCC Workers, Selma (which was published in a 1964 documentary book about the movement) pictures a pair of SNCC workers encouraging voter registration, which had been made difficult for African Americans in the South by obstacles such as literacy tests and administrative delays. The imperatives of the men’s signs, the visual rhythm created by their matching stances, and the striking tonal contrasts in the image make for a dramatic composition. Indeed, the moment Lyon captured was a tense one: soon after this shot was taken, the workers were arrested—an incident that Lyon also caught on camera.
After leaving SNCC in 1964, Lyon shifted his focus to documenting Chicago motorcycle gangs; subsequent projects have taken as their subject the Texas prison system, industrial workers in China, and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Lyon’s photographs, often published as books, stand beside his notable work as a writer and a filmmaker.
Introduction
Danny Lyon (born March 16, 1942) is an American photographer and filmmaker.
All of Lyon's publications work in the style of photographic New Journalism, meaning that the photographer has become immersed in, and is a participant of, the documented subject. He is the founding member of the publishing group Bleak Beauty.
After being accepted as the photographer for Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Lyon was present at almost all of the major historical events during the Civil Rights Movement.
He has had solo exhibits at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Menil Collection, the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. Lyon twice received a Guggenheim Fellowship; a Rockefeller Fellowship, Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism; and a Lucie Award.
Wikidata identifier
Q5220576
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed May 12, 2025.
Country of birth
United States
Roles
Artist, photographer
ULAN identifier
500055341
Names
Danny Lyon
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed May 12, 2025.
