Doing life

Lyon is a journalist, but not by the usual '90s definition. Whether he was photographing the Civil Rights Movement in the American South in the '60s or the guerrilla uprising in Mexico in the '90s, his journalism is not about the surface, the sensational, the soundbite; it is imbued with his respect for the people he photographs, and with the commitment and responsibility this respect entails. Now, in his collages, Lyon has come up with an emotional kind of journalism exploring classes and cultures and the options that people are allowed. Claiming the same credibility for his personal images as for his more conventional documentary pictures, he has made some of his most political and most moving work to date.

So I went to New Paltz, New York, where Danny had promised to introduce me to the Groat Outdoors. (His first suggestion had been to talk to me while flounder-fishing in Long Island Sound.) Instead, though, we spent the day in his studio, a converted barn, occasionally looking out at the Great Outdoors while we scanned the photos in his meticulously ordered archives. At the end of the day, while driving me to my bus, he described his intense need to get his work out because "Once you're dead, everyone will forget you." In his case this is unlikely. The signature book at his gallery was full of personal messages: "I bailed you out in New Jersey and now you're great." "I couldn't have written my dissertation on the Civil Rights Movement without your images." "It's 34 years since you spent a few days at my place." "Remember me? You gave me a ride on your bike." Lyon and his work have touched a lot of people, as his family photos have touched me, during his thirty years as one of America's foremost photographers.

NG

NAN GOLDIN: You've said you never pick a project for the sake of having a project, that you pursue things that come to you through life - things you already feel empathy with and passion about. How did your prison project, Conversations with the Dead [1971], come to you?

DANNY LYON: I'm not the same person I was when I did the prison work - we're talking about 1967. At that time working in a prison was a romantic concept to me. I came from Queens, I went to Forest Hills High School, I went to the University of Chicago, so prison was completely foreign to me. And prisons weren't photographed then, you never saw inside a prison. The public knew nothing about prisons. When Tom Wicker, one of the hot reporters for the New York Times back then, was told there was a rebellion in Attica, he said, What's Attica? And that was in '71, four years after I began this story. That's the way it was, that's the way they wanted it. And I distinctly remember thinking, If I could get inside a prison that would be very amazing.

I really stumbled into it. I was in Galveston doing a thing on black transvestites, and I saw a poster saying "Texas Prison Rodeo." I went up there, to Huntsville, and slept in a park. With some press passes I had, I bullshitted my way onto the floor of the rodeo, a public rodeo that the Texas prisons still hold. The inmates are dressed up in stripes, which they no longer actually wear - that's the old outfit. Of course they're bringing that all back. In Alabama now they have chain gangs again, prisoners chained together working out on the roads - blacks, the descendants of slaves, back in chains.

So I was on the rodeo grounds and I started talking to inmates. A couple of them said, You can get in here with a camera. They told me how to do it. The next day, after sleeping in the park, I went to see this fellow who was the assistant director of the Texas prison system. The next thing I knew I was sitting in the director's office, which was huge - the director of the prison system is a very important person in Texas. I was bullshitting as fast as I could. I think I implied I was with Life magazine. I saw the opportunity unfold in front of me, and I invented this whole thing on the spot: I said I wanted to do a serious historical study of the prisons, and I wanted to move to Texas to do it. The director, George Beto, said there was a sociologist working on the prisons, from New York State, and he asked if I knew him. The guy was at the State University of New York in Buffalo, and Beto said, If he says you're okay, you can come in. I walked out thinking who the fuck is this guy? So I called Alan Rinzler, the editor who was doing The Bikeriders [1968], which hadn't yet come out in print.

NG: Did the prison people know about The Bikeriders?

DL: I hid it from them. I was also afraid to show them the Civil Rights work. I really lived a double life.

So I asked Rinzler if he'd heard of this guy, whose name was Bruce Jackson. And he said he was publishing Bruce Jackson, he was doing a songbook or something with Bruce Jackson. I said, Hell, call the guy up, he's got the keys to the Texas prisons. And I drove from Texas to Buffalo in a '57 Chevy wagon. Jackson was very cordial to me, and did something very generous: he said, Sure, I'll tell them you're OK. And they gave me what they jokingly called the "Texas Ranger" pass: I could go anywhere except Death Row. I carried an ID just like a guard.