Danny
Lyon

Three Young Men, 1965

In 1963, Danny Lyon spent time in a poor white area of Chicago called Uptown. Nicknamed ‘hillbilly heaven’, it was a very tough and deprived neighborhood. With a borrowed Rolleiflex camera, he followed the inhabitants of Clifton Street, where he befriended the families who lived there, documenting intimate moments both inside their homes and on the street. Lyon is widely recognized for his personal and elegant reportage. ‘Three Young Men’ captures three men who had moved to the Uptown area from the deep South, posing against a concrete wall tagged by chalk graffiti. Their tough stance and rebellious manner is tempered by a sense of youthful vulnerability.

Inside Kathy’s Apartment, 1965

Lyon’s photographs have aimed not to create or construct the ‘photo-stories’ popular in contemporary magazines such as ‘Life’and ‘Look’. Instead, Danny has said his images were “…reality itself. And their power came from the power of the individual people I pictured and believed in.’ The scene of ‘Inside Kathy’s Apartment’ is particularly intimate, not only in the tender moment shared between the seated couple but also because we see various private domestic objects and a third person, sat only inches away and yet completely engrossed in her own activities.

The Collector's Editions

Danny Lyon’s Memories of Myself and Deep Sea Diver Collector’s Editions give a rare opportunity to own a genuine limited edition silver gelatin print by one of the most original and influential documentary photographers in American photography. Phaidon Collector's Editions are commissioned by and created especially for Phaidon Press. Each comprises a special edition of a Phaidon book that is beautifully bound, individually signed and numbered and presented in a custom-made box, together with an original work of art also signed and numbered by the artist.

Danny Lyon: Memories of Myself
Compelling photo-essays from the remarkable career of Danny Lyon

Specifications

  • PRINT: Three Young Men, 1965
  • Silver gelatin print
  • Sheet size: 355 x 280 mm (14 x 11 inches)
  • Image size: 230 x 230 mm (9 x 9 inches)
  • Print folder: 360 x 285 mm (14 1/4 x 11 1/4 inches)
  • Printed in 2009 in an edition of 100 plus 5 artist's proofs
  • All copies are signed and numbered by Danny Lyon
  • ISBN-13: 9780714856322
  • PRINT: Inside Kathy's Apartment, 1965
  • Silver gelatin print
  • Sheet size: 280 x 2355 mm (11 x 14 inches)
  • Image size: 200 x 300 mm (7 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches)
  • Print folder: 360 x 285 mm (14 1/4 x 11 1/4 inches)
  • Printed in 2009 in an edition of 100 plus 5 artist's proofs
  • All copies are signed and numbered by Danny Lyon
  • ISBN-13: 9780714856223
  • SPECIAL EDITION BOOK IN SLIPCASE
  • Hardback
  • 290 x 250 mm (11 3/8 x 9 7/8 inches)
  • 208 pp
  • 46 colour, 106 black and white illustrations

Overview

  • Memories of Myself is the first publication to feature a collection of essays made over a forty-year period by acclaimed American photojournalist Danny Lyon (b.1942). Each story is presented as a complete piece for the first time and brings together photographs and writings from throughout his remarkable career. Lyon helped to pioneer a kind of photographic “New Journalism” when he rebelled against magazine-style photo-stories and instead immersed himself in the lives of his subjects, paving the way for a future generation of photographers. Included works range from the sensual, richly colored image of girls in Colombian brothels and stunning black-and-white portraits of young local boys in 1965 Chicago to his iconic bikeriders. Because Lyon did almost no commercial work, however, many of these essays never reached he American public they were intended for. Some of them, like his affectionate portrayal of black transvestites in Galveston, Texas, were too controversial at the time of their creation; others, like the Colombian pictures, were made long before color was accepted as a serious medium among photographers. Lyon was one of the first photojournalists to use a tape recorder routinely and Memories of Myself includes a rare interview with the curator Hugh Edwards (1903-1986), an important figure in the history of photography who was instrumental in establishing photography as an art form. With his enormous empathy for his subjects, Lyon has he uncanny ability to settle into virtually any world. Memories of Myself is a lasting testimony to the time and humanity that it pictures.

About the authors

Danny Lyon has long been considered one of the most influential documentary photographers and has produced several highly collectable photobooks, exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, and won numerous awards. He divides his time between New York State and New Mexico.

Hugh Edwards was an influential American curator of photography. Along with Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen and John Szarkowski, Edwards struggled to win the acceptance of fine art and documentary photography as art forms. Edwards was Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1959 until 1970.

Danny Lyon
"Don’t talk to me about digital. I’ve got hypo in my veins. The stains you see on my shirts are Dektol. I like the dark room, the radio, the yellow light glowing. I rip the printing paper into quarters. One square is swimming in the Dektol. Through the clear, brown liquid I see my work emerging – my picture. Then I take it, the little piece, and give it away, a gift, to the person pictured in it, a return for what they have given me. Thirty years pass. People die. Children grow old. They keep the little piece, stuck up on a wall with thumbtacks, creased and stained: themselves, young and alive, forever. That is photography."

Danny Lyon has long been considered one of the most original and influential documentary photographers. He is also a filmmaker and writer. Lyon’s highly collectible books include The Bikeriders (1968), The Destruction of Lower Manhattan (1969), Conversations with the Dead (1971), Knave of Hearts (1999), and Indian Nations (2002). In 2007, he published the non-fiction work, Like a Thief’s Dream. There have been solo exhibitions of his work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, and the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany. He has won two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Fellowship, and many National Endowment for the Arts awards in photography and film. Lyon divides his time between New York State and New Mexico.

Danny Lyon
Phaidon Press Collector's Editions

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About Phaidon Press Collector's Editions

Collector's Editions are commissioned by and created specially for Phaidon Press.

Each comprises a special edition of a Phaidon book that is beautifully bound, individually signed and numbered, and presented in a custom-made box together with an original artwork made and also signed and numbered by the artist.