Albuquerque is burning….Again
Leaving a downtown theater after a showing of Men in Black Three the smoke outside was so heavy that I told Nancy to go get the car while I hid inside the glass enclosure of an air-conditioned restaurant. Smoke from 80,000 burning acres in the Gila Wilderness, 150 miles to the south is blanketing the … Continue reading
Edward Helmore of UK Guardian publishes major piece on Lyon’s work
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/may/15/danny-lyon-interview-photography
Juan Goes Home
Reading the opening of Jean Paul Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew, he argues that Anti-Semitism (dislike of, avoidance of, negative table talk about, hatred of, and extermination of Jews – he wrote this in 1947) was a Passion, not an Opinion. An Opinion is “You can’t trust Jews”, “They didn’t serve France in enough numbers in … Continue reading
In Memoriam JASON MARTIN
born in Idaho, died in the Hudson Valley April 2012
The first time Jason came to me was on my farm in the Hudson Valley. It was because I needed someone to help me with the Internet, with digital editing, with Photoshop, to bring me … Read more
“Tell me what a police state looks like!” “This is what a police state looks like!”
Sky Blue live streams OLA “Tell me what a police state looks like!” “This is what a police state looks like!” This journalist has spent many moments of his life crossing the line of the law…. I have been either detained or arrested for entering the United States with marijuana, speeding twice at 100 mph … Continue reading
Occupy LA, Ola!
The last two weeks have seen a successful coordinated national suppression of the Occupy camps using massive police force, with help from helicopters, firemen and Homeland Security. The powers at be, have shredded the first amendment of the Bill of Rights, which for those of us that do not remember it, states the government cannot … Continue reading
Occupy Journalism
1) Hold your ground. You are the press and the frontline of truth. 2) Refuse to join and oppose the formation of pools. Pools are being used to control the truth at its source, which is the most effective means of censorship. You are the journalist. You have a right and it is your duty … Continue reading
@bleakbeautyblog is live on Twitter
seeking links to Occupy LA et al
Occupy Thanksgiving 2011
In fifty years of traveling, of talking with, of photographing people I have often wondered “Is America a Country?” The disparity of culture, of wealth, of a people often at odds with each other makes me wonder what is it that unites us, if anything?
Our history is divided between the 16th … Read more
Occupy
The credo of bleakbeauty.com, which was created twelve years ago, includes the words “Is this what we have done with our freedom? Our greatest surviving value is greed”. On July 24 this blog praised NYC as “the finest definition of our Democracy.” One month later, in NYC Occupy Wall Street created a living heart in … Read more
“Blood in the Streets” – Live Audio
“Blood in the Streets” As Danny Lyon made a brief speech upon receiving the Missouri Honor Medal in Journalism, an award also given that night to David Fanning of Frontline, and previously to Winston Churchill, Walter Cronkite and Christine Amanpour, Lyon paused and drifted from his prepared text called “What is the Truth?” “I just … Continue reading
Definitions of Democracy Part One
Greetings from New York If our civilization should come to and end, and it may, and in the future another intelligent life form would look back at the history of human accomplishments, than New York City, as it exists right now at this moment, would stand as the finest definition of our Democracy. In a … Continue reading
New Mexico is burning
Albuquerque, 5,000 feet high, settled by the Spanish five hundred years ago. All around this valley, a mile of green clinging to the edge of the trickle they call the Rio Grande, fires have been raging, and on many evenings the smoke blows across the desert and settles down here in the valley. The six … Continue reading
The End of the Age of Photography (Pt. III)
The Girl with the Rolleiflex meets the Homeless Man. A young woman was walking down a wide Chicago street looking for something to photograph, hanging at her side, held in her fist, was a Rolleiflex with a 2.8, 80mm lens. She held it this way, partly to hide it and partly to have it ready … Continue reading
SNCC 50th Anniversary, Raleigh, NC
My name is Danny Lyon. In the summer of 1962 I hitch hiked to Cairo Illinois where I met John Lewis, and saw and photographed my first demonstrations. Within days I reached Albany, Georgia where I met James Forman. When Forman understood that I had come from Chicago to photograph the Movement, he sent me … Continue reading
Report from Bernalillo, New Mexico, August, 2001
Detail of mural on the Lady of Sorrows Gymnasium, Bernalillo By Danny Lyon Willie Jaramillo lies buried in the Lady of Sorrows cemetery. The graveyard is nestled in the corner of the exit ramp of Interstate 25 and the Cuba exit West. Johnnie Sanchez lies here too — Johnnie who spoke so eloquently about Willie … Continue reading
Bleak Beauty Blog 