Danny Lyon, Occupy Demonstration on Broadway, Los Angeles, 2011

Narrator: Three members of the Occupy Los Angeles movement argue with a policeman. A figure on the left wears the mask of the British anarchist Guy Fawkes, holding a camera and capturing this scene from over the protesters point of view. 

Lyon was extremely taken with Occupy’s struggle against income inequality. Just as with the Civil Rights movement almost fifty years earlier, Lyon took his camera and got involved. The Occupy images echo those earlier images of protest, while also reflecting their historical moment.

Lyon’s subjects are almost always windows onto something larger. He once explained, referring to his films. 

Danny Lyon: None of my films are about Chicanos, or poverty, or prison, or the border, all of which I deal with. They are about the existential struggle to be free. That is what unites everything I have done.