Danny Lyon

(American, born 1942)

Danny Lyon is an American photographer and filmmaker known for his journalistic interest in socioeconomic, counter-cultural, and civil rights issues. Lyon’s images of protesters being arrested, outlaw biker gangs as seen in his photobook The Bikeriders (1968), and the destruction of historic neighborhoods, fits into the term New Journalism coined by the author Tom Wolfe. Wolfe’s term referred to a purposefully subjective journalistic attitude, as seen in the writings of Hunter S. Thompson and Truman Capote. “The pictures do not ask you to help these people, but something much more difficult; to be briefly, intensely aware of their existence, an existence as real and significant as your own,” he reflected. Born on March 16, 1942 in Brooklyn, NY, he studied history and philosophy at the University of Chicago, graduating in 1963. That same year, Lyon began working as a photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and became involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Over the following decades, photography acted as a reason for Lyon to investigate and travel throughout America. Lyon currently lives and works in rural New Mexico. Today, his works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others.