Danny Lyon
BORN TO LOSE
BORN TO LOSE
Vintage Prints from the 1968
Texas Prison Series
March 11 - April 22, 2000
Dominoes, 1968
Gelatin silver print
Over fifty vintage photographs from Danny Lyon's mythic Texas Prison Series will be exhibited for the first time since their conception at Edwynn Houk Gallery from March 11 to April 22, 2000. While a significant portion of the pictures on view are reproduced in Lyon's celebrated book Conversations with the Dead (published 1971), many of the photographs are unpublished and unknown.
Late in 1967 Danny Lyon (born 1942) received unrestricted access to the entire Texas Prison system. He could take his camera anywhere he wanted -- with the one exception of Death Row -- unaccompanied by a guard. At the time, Lyon's self-initiated project was unprecedented. The result of these fourteen months of photographing was Lyon's third book, 'Conversations with the Dead', published in October 1971, one month after the Attica uprising occurred in New York State. Long out of print, Conversations with the Dead is now a collector's item.
Late in 1967 Danny Lyon (born 1942) received unrestricted access to the entire Texas Prison system. He could take his camera anywhere he wanted -- with the one exception of Death Row -- unaccompanied by a guard. At the time, Lyon's self-initiated project was unprecedented. The result of these fourteen months of photographing was Lyon's third book, 'Conversations with the Dead', published in October 1971, one month after the Attica uprising occurred in New York State. Long out of print, Conversations with the Dead is now a collector's item.
The exhibition at Edwynn Houk Gallery shows the first prints ever made of Lyon's now classic documentary pictures. Called Born to Lose, the show refers to the title of the first portfolio of photographs, published semi-clandestinely by the prison inmates inside the penitentiary, in 1969. This portfolio took its name from the tattoo on an inmate's arm which had 'born to lose' inscribed on it. The story of the making of the Texas Prison pictures is recounted in detail in Lyon's recently released autobiography, Knave of Hearts (Twin Palms Publishers).
Self-taught in photography, Danny Lyon initiated his
career during the Southern Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s as
the staff photographer for the Atlanta-based Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee. Lyon's involvement with the Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club
produced the cult book, The Bikeriders.
Also a writer and filmmaker (Please visit bleakbeauty.com
to see his works as a film maker), Lyon has received fellowships from
the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation in filmmaking
and photography. He lives and works on a farm with his family in New York
State.
