VIEWFINDING #24
Danny Lyon / Jermaine Francis / Derek Ridgers
Danny Lyon: This is My Life I’m Talking About
When Danny Lyon’s debut photobook The Bikeriders was published in 1968 it re-wrote the photojournalistic rulebook. In 1963 at the age of 21, Lyon began documenting the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club, and then, three years later, became a fully ‘patched’ member of the club. In 1973, this immersive approach become known as New Journalism after Tom Wolfe’s book of collected writing under the title was published.
This is My Life I’m Talking About is Lyon’s highly detailed, engaging memoir that not only covers his time with the Chicago Outlaws, but also the period directly prior when he documented the Civil Rights Movement as the first official photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). It also covers the late-1960s when Lyons spent 14 months inside six Texas correctional facilities, these images being collectively published in 1971 as Conversations With the Dead.
Lyon’s tender from-the-inside work has been a huge influence on the generations of documentarian photographers that have followed. These include Susan Meiselas, Hunter Barnes, and Mary Ellen Mark, all of whom would embed themselves in communities for extended periods, forging bonds and building close friendships with those that they photographed.
In the words of publisher Damiani, ‘This Is My Life I'm Talking About is a picaresque memoir written from inside the heart of the revolutionary twentieth century by one of its most crucial witnesses.’
Juicily written with verve, it includes previously unseen photographs and personal ephemera from Lyon, which combine to paint a vivid picture of the photographer’s world at the dawn of counterculture.
The Bikeriders is also released as a Hollywood feature film this month, starring Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, Tom Hardy, and with Mike Faist playing Lyon. The film takes characters photographed in Lyon’s 1968 book and works them up into fictionalised versions for the movie’s dramatic narrative. Scenes featuring recreations of Lyon’s images are woven in, and the original monochrome frames are then sequenced at the end.
Danny Lyon: This Is My Life I'm Talking About is available from Damiani here.
All images © Danny Lyon, courtesy of Damiani
Jermaine Francis: Once Upon a Time
2024 sees the eighth instalment of Peckham 24, and this year the not-for-profit festival has extended its run to ten days. Working to the curatorial theme of Back to the Future, the festival features 23 ‘innovative lens-based artists reflecting on themes of memory and personal histories, as well as the work of artists who take moments from the past as inspiration to re-stage, re-imagine or re-think existing narratives.’
One of the contributing artists is Jermaine Francis, whose Once Upon a Time is a series of montages relating to the Anglican Church, more specifically, to missionary programmes the Church ran from the late 1700s to 1950s in what was then known as the British West Indies. Using material sourced from the archives of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, Francis examines the Church’s relationship with the colonies and the ways in which text and imagery were manipulated in order to increase control over Black and Brown people.
The first montage is titled Select Parts of the Holy Bible for the use of the Negro Slaves in the British West-India Islands. This work utilises extracts of a heavily redacted version of the Bible, sometimes referred to as the slave bible, that was printed in 1807. This bible was produced with sole purpose of teaching a version of Christianity to enslaved people that did not include the concept of freedom.
In another montage, Francis uses photographs taken from damaged contact sheets made by photographer Bryan Heseltine in the 1950s. Originally produced under commission from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the Society then edited Heseltine’s work, distributing the modified images to increase power over People of Colour, echoing the way the slave bible had served as propaganda 150 years before.
Produced with curator and critic Emma Bowkett, Once Upon a Time is a thought-provoking body of work that leaves questions ringing in the mind.
Works produced for Peckham 24 are shown across a number of participating venues from 17th to 26th May, further details can be found here.
Image © Jermaine Francis
Derek Ridgers: The London Youth Portraits
Derek Ridgers: The London Youth Portraits is based on the now out of print photobook 78/87 London Youth, but with a fresh selection of images.
From 1978 to 1987, British photographer Derek Ridgers documented London youth culture in all its defiant glory. The tribes he shot included skinheads, punks, mods, and New Romantics, with the images becoming an important record of the capital’s subcultures in the decade when youth culture exploded.
‘The skinheads were the only ones who ever approached me to get their picture taken, rather than the other way around.’ Derek Ridgers
Signed copies of Derek Ridgers: The London Youth Portraits are available to pre-order from The Photographers’ Gallery Bookshop here. There is also a special edition (of 50) available from publisher AAC Art Books that comes complete with a signed print.
Derek Ridgers will also be signing copies of The London Youth Portraits at the ACC Art Books stand at Photo London on 18th May.
Images © Derek Ridgers, courtesy of AAC Art Books
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