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DANNY LYON, (American, b. 1942), CROSSING THE OHIO RIVER FROM KENTUCKY, titled and signed "Crossi...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:3,000.00 - 5,000.00 USD
DANNY LYON, (American, b. 1942), CROSSING THE OHIO RIVER FROM KENTUCKY, titled and signed  Crossi...
DANNY LYON
(American, b. 1942)
CROSSING THE OHIO RIVER FROM KENTUCKY
titled and signed "Crossing the Ohio River from Kentucky, Danny Lyon" in pencil on verso
"11/78/1" inscribed in pencil on verso
gelatin silver print
image: 83/4 x 13 in. (22.2 x 33 cm)
paper: 11 x 14 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
1966
printed 1978
ESTIMATE: $3,000-5,000
PROVENANCE
Phillips, Son & Neale, Inc., NEW YORK, May 5, 1979, Lot 502
LITERATURE
Danny Lyon, THE BIKERIDERS, NEW YORK, Macmillan, 1968, p. 49 (illustrated)
Peter Turner, ed., AMERICAN IMAGES: PHOTOGRAPHY 1945-1980, Middlesex, Penguin Books, Ltd., 1985, p. 121 (illustrated)
Danny Lyon, THE BIKERIDERS, Santa Fe, Twin Palms, 1997, p. 49 (illustrated)
After photographing the Civil Rights movement in the early 1960s, Danny Lyon broke the traditional photojournalistic prohibition against participation and joined a motorcycle club in Chicago called the Outlaws. In 1965 and 1966, he attended their weekly rallies and photographed the bikers. Around the same time, print journalist Hunter S. Thompson also joined a motorcycle gang and reported on it. Thompson's book, HELL'S ANGELS, was published in 1966, and Lyons's book, THE BIKERIDERS, appeared in 1968.
This photograph, shot from a moving motorcycle, may function as a visual metaphor for the counterculture of the 1960s. Wearing a death's head on his back, this easy rider speeds recklessly down the road without a helmet and his eyes not on the road.