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PHOTOGRAPHS
Lyon, Danny
U.S. (1942 - )
Cotton Pickers
1968
Gelatin silver print
9 1/8 x 13 7/16 in. (23.2 x 34.1 cm) image size; 11 x 13 15/16 in. (28 x 35.4 cm) sheet size
Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection, gift of Joseph and Elaine Monsen and The Boeing Company
FA 97.257

As a staff photographer for the University of Chicago's Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the early 19602, Danny Lyon exploited photography's power as a political tool. He frequently traveled the American South, photographing incidents of racial discrimination and civil rights protests. He left the group in 1965 and soon after was granted permission to make a photographic study of the harsh conditions endured by prisoners under the Texas Department of Corrections. From 1967 to 1968, Lyon worked at all six maximum-security units near Huntsville, Texas. Many of the most powerful images from the series were made at the Ellis Farm labor unit. Pictures of anonymous prisoners laboring and often collapsing under the scorching sun are common. This more formally elegant picture from the series uses the repetition of bent figures to heighten the impression that the prisoners have been stripped of their individuality and, thus, dehumanized by the circumstances of their incarceration. -- Label copy for The Photographic Impulse: A Critical History of Photography, The Joseph and Elaine Monsen Collection, Cincinnati Art Museum, October 12, 2001 to January 6, 2002.

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