Further Reading
Becherer, Joseph P.Selections from the Collection of the Kin-
sey Institute. Bloomington, IN: Kinsey Institute, 1990.
Crump, James.George Platt Lynes, Photographs from the
Kinsey Institute. Boston: Little, Brown and Company,
1993.
Feinblatt, Embria.Seventeen American Photographers. Los
Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1948.
Kirstein, Lincoln.George Platt Lynes Portraits, 1931–1952.
Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1960.
Lynes, George Platt.The New York City Ballet Photographs
taken by George Platt Lynes: 1935–1955. New York:
City Center of Music and Drama, 1957.
Miller, Barbara L., and Robert L. Cagle. ‘‘Out of the Kin-
sey Archives: Reevaluating the Photographic Works of
George Platt Lynes.’’The Ryder Magazine, Indiana Uni-
versity (September 9–23, 1994).
Pohorilenko, Anatole, and James Crump.When We Were
Three: The Travel Albums of George Platt Lynes, Monroe
Wheeler, and Glenway Wescott, 1925–1935. Santa Fe,
NM: Arena Editions, 1998.
Prokopoff, Stephen. George Platt Lynes: Photographic
Vision. Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1980.
Woody, Jack.George Platt Lynes: Photographs 1931–1955.
Pasadena, CA: Twelevetrees Press, 1981.
Woody, Jack.George Platt Lynes: Ballet. Pasadena, CA:
Twelvetrees Press, 1985.DANNY LYON
American
A self-taught photographer, Danny Lyon began
taking photographs at the age of 17. Raised in
Forrest Hills, New York, a middle class neighbor-
hood just outside Manhattan, Lyon went on to the
University of Chicago where he majored in history.
By the time he received his Bachelor of Art degree in
1963 Lyon had already begun work on one of the
most important series of his career, that on the civil
rights movement. In 1962, he had joined the Student
Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as a
photographer documenting the U.S. civil rights
movement. This association began a career as a
photojournalist and a filmmaker that has spanned
five decades.
Coming of age during the socially conscious
1960s, Lyon’s documentary photography and film
work grew from a deep commitment to social
issues. An innovator in the immersive and social
approach to documenting marginalized commu-
nities, Lyon’s belief in photography’s accessibility
and its potential for social change coupled with his
working method have made him one of the most
original photographers of the late twentieth cen-
tury. From the beginning of his career, Lyon has
maintained that documentary images should not be
isolated from the context of their making. He has
said that ‘‘Photography works best when it does
what it is uniquely qualified to do as a medium:
reproduce the real world.’’ Along with his peers
Bruce Davidson,Leonard Freed, Roland L. Free-
man, and Mark Ellen Mark, he sought through his
photography to raise awareness of issues of toler-
ance and social justice.
Lyon’s documentary projects investigate social
groups and their surroundings by his joining the
group and photographing it from within. He has
produced moving accounts of groups as diverse as
bikers, prison inmates, Native Americans, and Mex-
ican immigrants. Lyon’s own Jewish, east coast
background never stopped him from immersing
himself in communities different from his own. As
the first staff photographer for the Atlanta based,
predominantly African American organization,
SNCC, Lyon worked with this group from 1962 to- During that time Lyon’s ideas regarding the
usefulness of photography for social good were per-
fectly in line with the organization’s needs for doc-
umentation of the student-led movement within the
civil rights movement. His images of lunch counter
sit-ins and demonstrations were striking and often
showed the violence and risk involved in the strug-
gle. His photographs were reproduced in the press,
as well as in SNCC fundraising brochures, and were
compiled in his own book calledThe Movement
(1964). A later edition entitledMemories of the
Southern Civil Rights Movement(1992) included
additional text by Lyon and others that put the
student contributions to the civil rights movement
in context.
Lyon’s most celebrated book of the period, The
Bikeriders, was produced just after his time in the
south. Published in 1968,Bikeridersprobed the dan-
LYNES, GEORGE PLATT