Danny Lyon: Conversations with the Dead
Seeking to make “a picture of imprisonment as distressing as I knew it to be in reality," Lyon spent fourteen months in 1967-68, photographing inmates at seven prisons in the Texas Department of Corrections. Poignant images of brutal working conditions, degrading shakedowns and the endless snaking lines to strip, eat, and work capture the bleak monotony of daily prison life. The project resulted in the groundbreaking 1971 publication, Conversations with the Dead: Photographs of Prison Life with the Letters and Drawings of Billy McCune #122054. Described by photographer and President of Magnum, Martin Parr as Lyon’s ‘masterpiece’ Conversations with the Dead remains “as powerful and relevant as ever” in light of America’s ever expanding system of mass incarceration.
