Danny Lyon

Photographing a Lost New York

When I moved to Lower Manhattan in 1967, I decided to make a picture of every building in the neighborhood before the city knocked it down.

My Friend John Lewis

When, in the summer of 1962, I first saw him sitting in the corner of a small church in Cairo, Illinois, I knew who he was. John Lewis was a Freedom Rider.

Pandemic Journal, March 30–April 5

Brief dispatches by New York Review writers documenting the coronavirus outbreak around the world, including Danny Lyon in Bernalillo, Andrew McGee in New York, Nicole Rudick in South Orange, and more.

The Robert Frank I Knew

I thanked him for taking me in and letting me live in his apartment when I was a kid. After my work in Texas, when I returned to New York City at twenty-seven and had no place to live, Robert let me move into his family’s apartment on West 86th Street.

A Return to Perry, Utah

When, growing up, I would say I remembered something from the West, like finding a railroad spike on the side of a mountain, my parents would say, “You don’t remember that, you remember the film.” Dad liked to project his 8mm films on a pull-down screen in our apartment.

Welcome to El Paso

On Christmas Eve, ICE agents in El Paso, faced with an overcrowded facility, and following the death of two migrant children in their custody, took 214 migrants, drove them in vans to a park in downtown El Paso, and told them to get out.

Not in Our Grandchildren’s Lifetime

It takes a century for a pinyon forest to return to what it was before a fire.

Smoke, Wind, and Fire

We may be the last generation to fish the San Juan or anywhere, and as the world is consumed by smoke, wind, and fire, we drive on through the night.

Memories of Mississippi

Although I was a paid staff member, I always saw my work as a photographer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as journalism.

Hugh Edwards & Me

Hugh Edwards was the greatest curatorial figure in late twentieth-century photography. Meeting him on that rainy day would change my life forever.