Danny Lyon was a 21 year-old student at the University of Chicago when he fearlessly took photographs of a protest that made history: the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. These powerful images would establish the photographer and filmmaker as one of the most important chroniclers of the American civil rights movement. He went on to document the civil rights movement, turning his camera on countless gatherings, arrests, and funerals. Alongside this focus, he also photographed the series Conversations with the Dead (1967/68), the first to reveal the daily lives of inmates and guards in Texan prisons, as well as The Bikeriders (1966), a haunting, firsthand glimpse of life inside the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club.
Danny Lyon, Message to the Future, until 3 December, C/O Berlin.
Credits
1. Danny Lyon, Crossing the Ohio River, Louisville, 1966 © Danny Lyon / Courtesy Gavin Brown’s Enterprise.
