A preview of 'Danny Lyon: Message to the Future' with Julian Cox, Chief Curator and Founding Curator of Photography at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

From abandoned street children in Colombia to the Occupy movement in New York, Los Angeles, and Oakland, Danny Lyon: Message to the Future highlights the photographer’s concern with the welfare of individuals considered by many to be on the margins of society. This is the first comprehensive retrospective of Lyon’s career to be presented in 25 years and includes approximately 175 photographs and related films.

The exhibition features Willie, a film that follows the defiant and implacable Willie Jaramillo who is repeatedly thrown in jail for relatively minor offenses. The filmmakers gain access to jail cells, day rooms, and the cellblock where Jaramillo is locked up next to his childhood friend, convicted murderer Michael Guzman.

A preview of Trailer for 'Willie'

Inspired by the prose of Beat Generation writers, photo scrapbooks of his immigrant father, and by the unvarnished realism of photographer Walker Evans, Lyon developed a restless, compassionate vision. A leading figure in the American street photography movement of the 1960s, Lyon finds beauty in the starkest reality, and provides a charged alternative to the bland vision of American life often depicted in the mass media.

See Danny Lyon: Message to the Future, open now at the de Young.

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