Danny Lyon (b. 1942, Brooklyn, New York) is a self-taught American documentary photographer and filmmaker. An innovator of New Journalism documentation, Lyon’s worked from the inside, as a participant in his chosen subject. In 1962 he joined the civil rights movement and became chief photographer for SNCC where he became the roommate of and lifelong friend of Congressman John Lewis. Following that he spent two years photographing from within the Texas penal system where he befriended notoriously dangerous convicts. In 1971 the project was published in Conversations with the Dead. He received a BA in history in 1963 from the University of Chicago, where he served as a staff photographer for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
Lyon has received numerous awards and accolades including the Rockefeller Fellowship, the Guggenheim Fellowship in film, and the National Endowment for the Arts Photography Fellowship. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from The Art Institute of Boston and his work has been collected by major institutions such as the George Eastman House, Museum of the City of New York, The Photographers’ Gallery in London, Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, Baltimore Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Boston MFA, and Philadelphia Art Museum.
Lyon’s first solo exhibition was held at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1966 and his first comprehensive retrospective, Danny Lyon: Message to the Future, premiered at the Whitney in 2016. His seminal films include Soc. Sci. 127 (1969), Los Niños Abandonados (1975), and Little Boy (1977). Lyon has published several photographic books based on his immersive documentation of his subjects, such as The Bikeriders (1968), which details his experiences with outlaw motorcyclists exploring the American Midwest, Conversations with the Dead (1971), an interrogation of the Texas prison system, and Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement (1992). His memoir, This Is My Life I’m Talking About, was published by Damiani in April 2024.