"American Blood: Selected Writings 1961-2020 by Danny Lyon (Karma, 2021)

 

ISBN: 978-1-949172-45-4

Before reading Danny Lyon's "American Blood," I knew very little of this iconic photographer. I knew of his book "The Bikeriders" and that he is work-wise associated with Robert Frank's photographs and may be similar to Larry Clark, with respect to his "Tulsa." Like the other two, he is a photographer who captured a form of life in front of his camera lens. I also knew that he was very much an activist and involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Beyond that, he was a ghost to me. Every once in a while, a book would appear, but I sensed that he was a photographer/journalist who didn't compromise when it comes to his work. So in that sense, he reminded me of Frank and Clark. What I really didn't know is that Danny Lyon is a writer of great worth.  

Reading "American Blood" is like peeling an onion. The more I read these essays, interviews, and various writings, the more I get a sense of his character. When I read the first few essays, he struck me as someone who is not humorous and took things in life very seriously. One of the photographs in the book is the first photo he has ever taken. It's an image from Dachau, Hitler's first concentration camp, and it of a tree where the Nazis had taken Jews to be shot. A lot of the book deals with his time and thoughts on American prisons. Here was an artist who spent a great deal of time recording and acknowledging the horrors on this planet. 

At first, it was a bit too much for me. Still, I couldn't put the book down due to Lyon's character as well as his writing which I found beautiful because he avoids the easy answer or knuckle-head response to issues that were and still are important in American society. As one reads on, his world expands, and as a reader, you're going on the ride with him. His observant writing and stance make him unique because he articulates so well. He nails the prison system for what it is, an exploration factory and a landscape that is a world within a world. Lyon accepts people as if they are, not as he thinks they should be. His moral hatred for those in power and exploitation is apparent on these pages. As a photographer, it's interesting to acknowledge the difference between the digital and analog world. He doesn't like digital, but as the book goes on, he accepts certain aspects of that environment. For social justice, he acknowledges using a phone camera where one can capture a moment of distress or injustice, not just by one photographer. Lyon is the generation of the fellow who carries a heavy camera with him and deals with obtaining film, developing, having a darkroom, and the pros and cons of it. This is not a manual on how to take images. But more of a point-of-a-view of a creative soul who cares deeply about the world around him. Lyon cares about photography as an art and as a manner to explore one's world and record the injustices that take place around the planet. In such a way, Danny Lyon is very much a romantic adventurer. 

Robert Frank Film Works on Tosh Talks

November 9, 2014

November 9, 2014

“The eye should learn to listen before it looks.” There is film history and then there is my film history.  In many ways film aesthetic finished when talkies came upon the scene.   When 8mm projectors came upon the casual consumer, where they can screen their home movies, some companies sold 8mm silent comedy shorts as well as vintage cartoons - I think Betty Boop and an early version of Mickey Mouse.  I have a strong memory of watching these films projected on the blank white wall in our house.  The noise came from one source, and that was the projector.  Sometimes the projector was faulty and caused the film to burn, which was at the same time, horrifying and fantastic to watch.   Watching Marie Dressler’s face as she burns on my parent’s wall, was in a sense my first version of an actual death.   No, she didn’t die, but her representation, what was projected, clearly died.  It was perhaps the first time that I experienced death.

I was always aware of death while watching films before 1928, because more likely these people that I’m watching are more likely dead.   I always believed in ghosts, but not the way that they are around to haunt us, or even aware of our existence.  I think of them as being a negative or maybe positive imprint on our memory, therefore they exist in our world as an image.   There is nothing more real than a location - and even if that location has been altered, there is something so important about the essence of “place” that one can’t erase its history.  Film I think is the practical working theory, where you go into a theater and watch a spectacle of death being played out in front of one’s eyes.   To listen, one needs to be aware of what they’re watching.  When I see film footage of someone I know, and they are now dead, it doesn’t bring their presence back to me.  It makes me realize that they are truly dead.    Whenever I see a photograph or a work on film, it is dead to me.   The past is death.  But the memory of the past is alive.  The difference is small, yet quite significant.

“I always say that I don’t want to be sentimental, that the ‘films’ shouldn’t be sentimental, and yet, I am conscious of my sentimentality.” I often acknowledged that Mabel Normand was the first person in cinema to actually throw a custard pie in someone’s face - I believe the first victim of the pie in the face is Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle.  That I used to watch as well, on my parent’s wall.  I never experienced a pie in the face, but it used to make me laugh.  Now, I feel a sense of tragedy, because that fleeting moment was one of happiness.   Both Fatty and Mabel had a sad ending in their lives, and the film they left was a memory of a moment’s blissfulness.   On the other hand, “excessive suffering brings with it a kind of dull insensibility and stupor.” I need to let the past go, so I can live.  Yet, there seems a need to preserve a past experience.  “I wish I could press snowflakes in a book like flowers.”

"Pull My Daisy" by Robert Frank, Alfred Leslie & Jack Kerouac

photograph by John Cohen

A book or object by the German publisher Steidl is always excellent. They simply do not put out bad titles or books. And for the past so-many years they are the press to go to with respect to the works of Robert Frank. "Pull My Daisy" is a film made by Frank and Alfred Leslie that is basically ground zero for the Beat Generation. Based on an un-produced play by Jack Kerouac, this 28 minute film stars poets Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and painter Larry Rivers. With Alice Neal and David Amram. And a totally improvised voice-over by Kerouac. 

This is a work that has 'charm' all over it. In many ways a goof, but as one knows in the Beat world, a goof is sort of a heightened experience. Kerouac is a genius, and there is no bad Jack. Sometimes there is weak Jack, or Jack-can-be-better - but overall this titan of Beat can really do no wrong with me.

For around $28 you get a beautifully (and simply) designed box with two books. The 'script' with essay and another book by the great photographer John Cohen with his footage of the making of this film and other images of them just hanging out. Simply essential in a goofy way.

Photo by John Cohen, Jack Kerouac & Robert Frank