LYON DANNY (1942 ) Portfolio entitled The Southern Civil Ri

Sale 2158 - Lot 298

Unsold

Estimate: $ 35,000 - $ 45,000

LYON, DANNY (1942- )
Portfolio entitled "The Southern Civil Rights Movement." With 28 photographs taken in Southern Illinois, Maryland, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and the District of Columbia. Silver prints, approximately 9x13 inches (22.9x33 cm.) and the reverse, 5 are matted, each with Lyon's signature and sequential number, in pencil, and Chuck Kelton's initials or signature and the dates in pencil, in the Bleak Beauty hand stamp, on verso; one is noted as printed by Raphael Lyon. Folio, black clamshell case, contents loose as issued. one of only 10 sets, plus an artist's proof. 1962-1964; printed 1996-1998

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Understood as a powerful tool within the Civil Rights Movement, photography was adeptly used by activists as an important means of furthering and promoting ideas, documenting events, and illuminating complicated and emotional realities. As a young photographer Danny Lyon traveled and worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (1962-64), photographing sit-ins, arrests, marches, and leaders. The result is a set of images both passionate and lyrical that were used in publicity posters and brochures and which were later published in an early, and now classic, civil rights photobook entitled "The Movement."

This portfolio highlights 28 of Lyon's photographs. Transcendent unity and courage, intense hatred, cultural tensions, and bold struggle are set in high relief in these images that vividly depict the Civil Rights Movement as the tremendous howl of people demanding to be heard. In one, a man, his head partially bowed and brow furrowed kneels to pray on a sidewalk next to a young girl and another young man. This man is John Lewis, who would the following year become chairman of SNCC and two decades later a congressman. But, in this photograph from 1962, as the Civil Rights Movement rips across the South, the moment is intimate as a prominent leader is shown in solemn reflection.