NYAB Event - Danny Lyon "Deep Sea Diver"

Danny Lyon "Deep Sea Diver"

Churner and Churner

This event has ended.

Churner and Churner announces the gallery's first exhibition with photographer Danny Lyon. "Deep Sea Diver" presents over 40 gelatin silver prints taken during Lyon's recent travels in the coal country of Shanxi Province of Northeast China. Shot between 2005 and 2009 and exhibited as a group for the first time, the photos exemplify Lyon's signature photographer-as-participant approach. The exhibition also includes maquettes for the book Deep Sea Diver (published by Phaidon in 2011), as well as an installation of two memorabilia-covered walls transplanted from the artist’s darkroom in upstate New York. Together, the photos, walls and maquettes reveal an artist's attempt to make sense of his own history.

Lyon's black-and-white, 8x10-inch images of cafes, coal miners, and circuses stand apart from the monumental size and digital gloss of much contemporary photography. Throughout his career, Lyon has frequently conceived of his series as book projects, from his classic Bikeriders—the result of two years as a member of the Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club—to his exploration of Texas prisons, Conversations with the Dead, and the memoir Knave of Hearts. Likewise, the "Deep Sea Diver" series is part travel album, part diary, a photojournalistic personal narrative about aging and history. "The landscape looks as if it has survived a bomb blast," writes the 70-year old artist in his accompanying text. "There are times when I wonder if I am making a record of the past, or if I’ve come to see the future."

Lyon's style is dry, matter-of-fact, and startling honest – not just about his subjects, but about himself. His method is one of collage, as seen in the two maquettes for the book, an early black-and-white model and the final three-volume version on Strathmore sketchpads. Working with his prints, Lyon constructs the book by hand, taping and re-taping certain images, shifting pages, and leaving blanks for text. For over 30 years Lyon did the same thing to his studio wall: arranging and rearranging announcement cards, prints, and mail on the sheetrock surface. When the artist decided to move out of his studio, Churner and Churner removed his darkroom walls to preserve the ephemera. "Deep Sea Diver" is a window into Lyon’s intricate process, a tour of his private inspirations, the accumulation of objects, moments, and journeys that end up in his photographs.