CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/19/2021

Humanity as endangered species in 'Danny Lyon: American Blood'

Featured photograph, of the arrest of Atlanta high school student Taylor Washington in 1963, is reproduced from Danny Lyon: American Blood, Selected Writings 1961–2020, Karma Books' gorgeous, 396-page new release collecting the influential photographer's writings on documentary and social change in America. Here, Lyon fearlessly takes on the Southern civil rights movement, prison reform, Robert Frank, pseudohistory, climate criminals, the 60s and the Koch Brothers, among many other topics and issues, and conducts interviews with Hugh Edwards, Nan Goldin and Susan Meiselas. "Over time," he writes in the chapter Memories of Myself, "I came to believe that, as the modern corporate world developed in America, reality and humanity itself were threatened, not with a physical but with a spiritual extinction. Humanity itself became an endangered species in my mind, and I was drawn to picture people and places that exuded their humanity. In doing so I preserved my own."