A giant of post-War documentary photography and film, Danny Lyon helped define a mode of photojournalism in which the picture-maker is deeply and personally embedded in his subject matter. A self-taught photographer and a graduate of the University of Chicago, Lyon began his photographic career in the early 1960s as the first staff photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a national group of college students who joined together after the first sit-in by four African American college students at a North Carolina lunch counter.
From 1963 to 1964, Lyon traveled the South and Mid-Atlantic regions documenting the Civil Rights Movement. The photographs were published in The Movement, a documentary book about the Southern Civil Rights Movement, and later in Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement (1993), Lyon’s own memoir of his years working for the SNCC.
Danny Lyon
Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement
June 30 – September 9, 2018
Delaware Art Museum
2301 Kentmere Parkway Wilmington, DE 19806
delart.org
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reverend Ralph Abernathy are escorted back to jail in Albany, Georgia, 1962. Danny Lyon (born 1942). Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches. © Danny Lyon, New York & Magnum Photos, New York / Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.
Entrance to the City Café, Selma, 1963. Danny Lyon (born 1942). Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches. © Danny Lyon, New York & Magnum Photos, New York / Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.
Demonstrations at an “all-white” swimming pool in Cairo, Illinois, 1962. Danny Lyon (born 1942). Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches. © Danny Lyon, New York & Magnum Photos, New York / Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.
Clifford Vaughs, another SNCC photographer, is arrested by the National Guard, Cambridge, Maryland, 1964. Danny Lyon (born 1942). Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches. © Danny Lyon, New York & Magnum Photos, New York / Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.
Sheriff Jim Clark arrests two demonstrators who displayed placards on the steps of the federal building in Selma, 1963. Danny Lyon (born 1942). Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches. © Danny Lyon, New York & Magnum Photos, New York / Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.
John Lewis in Nashville, 1963. Danny Lyon (born 1942). Gelatin silverprint, 11 x 14 inches. © Danny Lyon, New York & Magnum Photos, New York / Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.
Arrested for demonstrating in Americus, Georgia, teenage girls are kept in a stockade in the countryside near Leesburg. They have no beds and no working sanitary facilities. I make pictures through the broken glass of the barred windows, 1963. Danny Lyon (born 1942). Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches. © Danny Lyon, New York & Magnum Photos, New York / Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.
