Photographer Danny Lyon became famous for documenting the civil rights struggle and death row inmates in Texas prisons and riding with bikers in the 60s, To make these affecting, intimate images, Lyon was both a participant and an observer. He got to know his subjects and often captured their stories in highly descriptive, opinionated texts as well as in photographs. His goal, he said, was “to destroy Life magazine”—to present powerful, real alternatives to the hollow pictures and stories permeating mass media in America. A selection of 45 of his most compelling images is currently at the Menil Collection in Houston.

Lyon’s anti-authority, 60’s-warrior idealism is undimmed. He recently published a book on workers in the industrial Shanxi province of China and, late last year, turned his Leica on Occupy camps in Albuquerque, as well as New York’s Zucotti Park, Oakland and Los Angeles. “Occupy makes my heart beat! I hope there’s blood on the streets,” he said. At a recent awards ceremony at the Missouri School of Journalism, he warned students of certain "truths" – that a "puritanical code has eviscerated the US political system", that there's a growing attack on Mexican immigrants, and that good journalism is about truth not ideology.

"I'm a 60s guy," Lyon offers by way of explanation. "The civil rights movement was my coming of age." At the same time, Life magazine, the photojournalism colossus of the era, increasingly towed the establishment line. "I was against it and I knew in my heart of hearts there was a better way to take photographs of people and the world." [More from the Guardian article by Edward Helmore].

This World Is Not My Home: Danny Lyon Photographs, on view through July 29 at The Menil Collection. 1533 Sul Ross Street, Houston, TX. Save the date: Sunday, June 3, 3:00 pm: The Artist’s Eye | Beth Secor on Danny Lyon. Information.

05252012