Danny Lyon - Conversations With The Dead - 1971

One of the most important photobooks made by renowned Magnum photographer Danny Lyon, Conversations with the Dead provides an extraordinary photographic record of life inside six Texas prisons and the relationships Lyon built with the inmates. Revolutionary at the time of publication, it was one of the first photobooks to include ephemera including paintings made by one of the inmates.

Invited by the Director of the Texas Department of Corrections to document the prison system, Danny Lyon "did for around 14 months, drawing on photographs taken in six different institutions for the book. Given his rebellious disposition, hos view of prison life is, predictably, sympathetic to the inmates, a view amplified by lifer Billy McCune's writings, paintings and other documents...

Lyon's photographs must be amongst the most eloquent ever shot in a prison, He captures the hard labour and the degradation in one memorable image after another, frequently photographing from a low angle, which gives the inmates a heroism of a sort, but he does not overemphasize this. Rather, the device serves to place him, the photographer, the man with the power, in an aspect of respect, in servitude to the imperative to tell as much of the truth as he can." Parr and Badger, p.18

Danny Lyon photographed in six prisons between 1967 and 1968 and was able to document the reality of incarceration. The book also includes texts taken from prison records, letters from the convicts, and inmate artwork. In particular, the book focuses on the case of Billy McCune, a convicted rapist whose death sentence was commuted to life in prison during the climax of the book's popularity. An outstanding example of a documentary photobook by one of the best known concerned photographers.

'An intimately engaged social document and a study in outlaw masculinity' Andrew Roth.

Listed in:
Parr and Badger - The Photobook Vol2 pp. 18-19.
Andrew Roth - The Open Book pp. 278-79.
Andrew Roth - 101 Books pp. 210-11.
M&M Auer, 802 Photobooks p. 535.

Condition:
Very good copy. Top and bottom of spine damaged. Edgewear to cover. Red stamp to underside. Rippling to top of the pages in the last third of the book. Please examine photos for condition.