power of the press into thousands of individual hands.
This did not happen. Instead the explosion of interest in
photography spurned few magazines, but hundreds of art
galleries instead.
Lyon’s personal involvement as a witness to the
struggles he records has made him a unique figure
in American photography. He has been an unapo-
logetic subjective reporter, pursuing a type of advo-
cacy in documentary practice and expressing his
views on the failures of society and the endurance
of disenfranchised communities. He has also been a
champion of the photographic book as a distinct
and democratic form of expression where text and
image have equal importance in illuminating the
photographer’s vision.
LisaHenry
Seealso:Documentary Photography; Photographic
‘‘Truth’’; Representation and Gender; Social Repre-
sentation
Further Reading
Lyon, Danny.The Bikeriders. San Francisco: Chronicle
Books, 2003.
———.Bushwick. Rozel: Le Point du Jour editeur, 1996.
———.Conversations with the Dead. Austin, TX: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1971.
———.The Destruction of Lower Manhattan. New York:
Power House Books, 2005.Pictures from the New World.
Millerton, New York: Aperture, 1981.
———.I Like to Eat Right on the Dirt. Clintondale, NY:
Bleak Beauty Books, 1989.
———.Indian Nations: Pictures of American Indian Reser-
vations in the Western United States. Santa Fe, NM:
Twin Palms Publishers, 2002.
———.Knave of Hearts. Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms Pub-
lishers, 1999.
———.Merci Gonaives. Clintondale, NY: Bleak Beauty
Books, 1988.
———.Memories of The Southern Movement. Chapel Hill,
NC: University of North Carolina.
———.The Paper Negative. Clintondate, NY and Berna-
lillo, NM: Bleak Beauty Books, 1980.NATHAN LYONS
American
Since the mid-1950s, Nathan Lyons has contributed
significantly to the discipline of photography. As a
photographer, curator, director, teacher, writer, edi-
tor, and lecturer, his influence has been felt in the
field for nearly five decades. Leroy F. Searle writing
forAfterimagein the Jan/Feb 2004 issue recalls:
When I first met Nathan Lyons, I anticipated something
midway between a legend and a rumor—entirely appro-
priate for someone who...had created a full-fledged
graduate program in photography affiliated then with
SUNY-Buffalo...he moved the program from the George
Eastman House to an old woodworking factory, enlisting
every new class of graduate students into remodeling...
and turning the Visual Studies Workshop into one of the
most remarkable institutions in the contemporary history
of American art and culture, whose graduates, faculty,
and friends are, without much exaggeration, the Who’s
Who of American Photography.
Born January 10, 1930 in Jamaica, New York,
Lyons, a self-taught photographer, became inter-
ested in the medium in 1945 at the age of 15. After
having graduated from Haaren High School, New
York in 1947, he enrolled for two years in the
Manhattan Technical Institute where he studied
architectural drafting, and then went on to major
in Business Administration at Alfred University,
New York from 1948–1950. In 1950, Lyons enlisted
in the U.S. Air Force as a photographer, was
involved in the Photo Intelligence Unit in Korea
from 1951–1953, and then remained for a year as a
staff news writer and public relations photogra-
pher. He returned to Alfred University in 1954
and majored in English literature, graduating in
1957 with a Bachelor of Arts. That same year he
was hired by the George Eastman House in Roche-
ster, New York, a museum of photography and
cinematography founded in 1947, to be the Direc-
tor of Information and Assistant Editor of the
magazineImage. His first curatorial project was in
1959 when Lyons organized the traveling exhibi-
tion,Seven Contemporary Photographers. He has
since gone on to immerse himself completely in
photography. He foundedAfterimage, a nonprofit,
bimonthly journal of photography, independent
film, video, and alternative publishing, and was
editor of the magazine from its start in MarchLYON, DANNY