Dissent and Disobedience in Danny Lyon’s Archive

Tom Rankin, Duke University

With the recent “Movement and Memory: Through the Camera Lens of Danny Lyon” exhibition at Rubenstein Library at Duke as a starting place, this presentation explores Danny Lyon’s work with SNCC and the resonance and reminders of disobedience and dissent that his photography, writing, and archive reveals and continues to elicit.  With an interest in his images that reveal resistance, protest, and dissent toward the camera by the white community—as well as Lyon’s place in the movement as a white photographer—this presentation will explore the ways in which his images were born in the moment, functioned in SNCC and related publications, have been published and widely seen through the years, and continue to resonant within and beyond the archive.  Lyon credits SNCC Executive Secretary James Forman both for hiring him at SNCC, but also for understanding, among many things, the power of images, communication, and documentation.  This presentation will also demonstrate that Forman and Lyon, both students of history, saw the power of the documentary voice both in the moment and long after.