Quiet Combat

Danny Lyon, The Walls, 1967

By Jim Hughes

I first met Danny Lyon in 1968 at a sprawling Museum of Modern Art exhibit of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work. A mutual friend introduced us. I was relatively new on the scene, a young photo magazine editor, and Danny was an up-and-coming star at Magnum. His resumé already included The Bikeriders* and The Destruction of Lower Manhattan. I remember a huge mane of curly hair with the texture of steel wool, and cowboy boots that clicked on the MoMA Sculpture Garden's tile.

As he turned on a heel and clicked away, Danny Scowled, "I have no use for camera magazine editors."

Nonetheless, and despite the attitude, it would not be long before I began publishing Danny's powerful photographs. One essay in particular, "Life Inside," a 14-page black-and-white documentation of Texas prisons taken mostly from the prisoners' perspective, proved particularly revealing. Conversations With the Dead was the book that resulted from the project. I assigned Dan McCoy, a Black Star photographer who had been writing a column for Camera 35, the magazine I was editing at the time, to conduct an in-depth interview to accompany the essay in America: Photographic Statements, a new kind of U. S. Camera Annual that I was putting together. It would include a portfolio from Eva Rubinstein, the first published essay by a young Jodi Cobb, who went on to be a staff photographer at the National Geographic, Jill Freedman’s "Circus" pictures, Bill Owens' Suburbia before it became a classic book, Robert Frank’s The Lines of My Hand, and Martin Schneider's color expose of pollution in America. Frank was interviewed by Sean Kernan, another fine photographer who regularly wrote for the magazine, and Schneider's no-holds-barred Q&A was conducted by Bob Nadler, Camera 35's technical editor.

For his interview with Lyon, McCoy was to meet Danny at an undisclosed location in the Southwest. But when he called as instructed for directions, McCoy was told there would be no interview. Danny suggested he would interview himself and mail it in.

After all, he pointed out, he had recently declined to be interviewed by The New York Times. McCoy, who had just been inside the Utah State Penitentiary for eight days photographing for the movie version of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, understood that Lyon was (and is) unique among working photographers. "He is a loner who guards his private life and its location with missionary zeal," McCoy noted.

"You are asking for a freedom in your answers that you are unwilling to give the interviewer in his questions," McCoy suggested to Lyon that day. "What kind of interview is it when the person interviewed determines both the questions and the answers?"

After a good deal of back-and-forthing, a compromise was reached. McCoy could conduct the interview then and there. The published result was appropriately titled, "Conversations From a Phone Booth on Route 66..."

Evidently, Danny Lyon liked our layout, approved of the concept for the Annual as a whole, and didn’t hate the interview. Over the years, we became friends. At one point, I even published a set of his black and whites whose borders he had hand-colored in magic marker. Well I remember the day in 1983 when we were to meet at our office to select a retrospective portfolio for Camera Arts, and I came out to find him lounging on the couch in our waiting room, launching perfectly folded paper airplanes at our long-suffering receptionist!

When Camera Arts was unceremoniously killed in a kind of corporate coup de grâce a couple of months later, Danny surprised me by writing an elegy for Aperture: "Jim Hughes, who…brought Camera Arts to its preeminent position among the popular photography magazines, has lost magazines the way a good cavalry officer loses horses in battle. Shortly after he published W. Eugene Smith’s essay 'Minamata' in Camera 35 in 1974, that magazine was sold (out from under him) by its owner, the American Express Company.

"We have lost our democracy, mostly through lack of courage. That was ultimately Camera Arts' finest quality, and its fatal flaw. In a world that nourishes mediocrity, it tried to be bold…. In this sad time, with our powers usurped, aesthetic success guarantees failure."

Or, as a friend cryptically noted upon learning of my magazine's death, "Sh*t rises!"

Kirk Decker kindly wrote in a comment to my recent piece on Ralph Steiner: "I still have the entire Camera Arts run. It was a great photography magazine, and I was crushed when it was over."

So was I, Kirk, so was I. Come next June, thirty years will have passed since that sad time, and I can honestly say I still haven't fully recovered. I suspect that was the point at which I began to understand, or at least recognize, my own reclusive impulse: the need to stay within oneself in order to see beyond more clearly.

Jim

[*I really hope you bought this when I told you to—take a look at the current price on the paperback reissue, which as I recall was $15 when I recommended it. —MJ]

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Neil Swanson: "I also have every issue of Camera Arts. Dog eared they are. Wore them out. Nothing since has been as good. I was turned on to many many people I still admire. I also own The Bikeriders, and Suburbia ( signed by Bill at a Fred Picker workshop). I have an old original copy of Eugene Richards' Dorchester Days. I mailed him cash; a brown envelope came with a signed book. Decades later I heard him speak at a VII Seminar. He signed it again, much to our mutual surprise. He hadn't seen a copy of the book in ages."

Comments

[Paddy C]

Great story. Thanks for sharing. I'm a big fan of Lyon's work.

[Jeff]

Many years ago I established a very good relationship with a photo book dealer, from whom I bought many fine condition first editions. He unexpectedly gifted me with a 1997 edition of The Bikeriders, one of 150 slipcased copies signed by Danny Lyon.

This column obviously reminds me of that treat, but ironically and unfortunately on more than one level given the posted photo. That bookseller, I learned after not hearing from him for some time, was arrested and sent to prison for some bad things totally unrelated to his book business. I was shocked.

I haven't looked at my Lyon book for quite awhile; maybe a good day to do so.

[Brian Miller]

"We have lost our democracy, mostly through lack of courage."

No, we have not. We have only lost the will to publish. There is nothing today standing between those who want to produce and those who want to consume. The democracy of the marketplace is absolutely intact, and no barrier deprives any of us of reaching out and delivering what we wish.

Today, anyone can have a custom book published. Today, anyone can start a website. Today, anyone can post to a blog. There is no barrier between the producer and the consumer. None.

When a magazine dies because it doesn't produce revenue, then face up to the real reason: the consumer doesn't care. Apathy. Don't flinch from the real statement, "I didn't buy your book because I don't care." That statement will always ring with truth.

People care about photographs because what they see evokes emotion within them. Without that emotion, nobody cares. Apathy.

Has Danny Lyon lost his own courage to publish? Today, now, that's his decision.

[Mike Plews]

I have a few issues of Camera Arts that survived a rather bad broken pipe incident in our basement. Loved that magazine and miss it.
I would pay good money for a Kindle edition of all the back issues. Not holding my breath on that.

[Jim Hughes]

I must confess I don't understand Brian Miller's point. Camera Arts magazine was conceived in 1980, which I remember as the year Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter for president. Danny Lyon wrote his piece, published in Aperture, on the death of Camera Arts magazine in 1983. Conservatism and Reaganomics had begun to take hold. It was a far different world back then. Computers were primitive. The internet we know today was non-existent. There were no blogs. No websites. No broadband. To apply what is possible today to 1983 makes absolutely no sense, at least to me. Miller writes, "There is nothing today standing between those who want to produce and those who want to consume. The democracy of the marketplace is absolutely intact, and no barrier deprives any of us of reaching out and delivering what we wish." This may or may not be true today, but it certainly was not true 30 years ago, and it has no bearing on Danny Lyon, who doesn't need me to defend his courage. Miller further writes, "When a magazine dies because it doesn't produce revenue, then face up to the real reason: the consumer doesn't care. Apathy." Camera Arts had a growing and enthusiastic reader base. In 1982, it received the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. No, Camera Arts was killed because the corporation that owned it had other plans, and an agenda that none of us on the editorial side knew about. But that's all I am prepared to say on the matter. After 30 years, that dog should be left to rest in peace.

--Jim Hughes

[mike]

I love Danny Lyon. That book in the link is excellent.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Thanks very much for the story, Jim.

I very recently had the opportunity to participate in the review of the AIC's Danny Lyon prints and portfolios. I was already familiar with much of the work (ex: Dead and the motorcycle gang) but I was struck by how good a printer Lyon is/was when he set his mind to doing so. Some of the best b&w photogs of his day would shoot mindful of their printing limits. Lyon seemed to shoot like he already had a digital camera with raw facilities. Yet he could eke out presence from otherwise blown highlights and crushed shadows consistently.

Separately, earlier this year I was at a dinner with several museum curators and collectors. Danny Lyon's name popped forth during the evening's conversation. I've never seen such a mixed group become so instantly and strongly polarized. It seemed that those who knew/know him thought a bit less of him than those who did not. For his talents he seems to have pissed-off many, many people.