Top of page

Exhibition Not an Ostrich: & Other Images from America's Library

Not an Ostrich: & Other Images from America's Library

DANNY LYON. Clifford Vaughs, a SNCC photographer is arrested, torn between troops and demonstrators. Cambridge, Maryland, 1964

Danny Lyon. Cambridge, Maryland. Clifford Vaughs, a SNCC photographer is arrested, 1964. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (45.00.00) © Danny Lyon/Magnum Photos

DANNY LYON. Clifford Vaughs, a SNCC photographer is arrested, torn between troops and demonstrators. Cambridge, Maryland, 1964

Brooklyn native Danny Lyon is one of the most influential documentary photographers of the post-war generation. With a few select others, Lyon forged a new style of documentary in which the photographer immerses himself in his subject’s world and does not feign being “objective” about what he photographs. The groups in which he was immersed included the Chicago Outlaws, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and men in Texas prisons, all of which are represented in different sections of this exhibition.