An exceptional exhibition. The Destruction of Lower Manhattan by Danny Lyon
18/09/2020.
PHotoESPAÑA 2020 [Madrid] Spain
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
ICO Museum opened the photographic exhibition ‘The Destruction of Lower Manhattan’ that we announced last July, by photojournalist and filmmaker Danny Lyon. An exceptional exhibition that brings together 76 images of this part of Manhattan when it was being demolished in 1967. It can be visited from today until January 17, 2021.
The exhibition, which is part of the Official Section of PHotoESPAÑA 2020, is one of the most important photographic essays of the 20th century with the city as the center of attention. Also, coinciding with the exhibition, the Museum will also show the series ‘An album: Europe, summer 1959’, a selection of 24 photographs never exhibited before, which Danny Lyon took at the beginning of his career during a trip to Europe. Among them there are several taken in Spain.
The exhibition, which is part of the Official Section of PHotoESPAÑA 2020, is one of the most important photographic essays of the 20th century with the city as the center of attention. Also, coinciding with the exhibition, the Museum will also show the series ‘An album: Europe, summer 1959’, a selection of 24 photographs never exhibited before, which Danny Lyon took at the beginning of his career during a trip to Europe. Among them there are several taken in Spain.
Lifting a burner to cut the bolts of the cast iron facade of no. 82 Beekman Street, 1967 by Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon / Magnum Photos. Courtesy ICO Museum
View to the south from no. 100 Gold Street, 1967 by Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon / Magnum Photos. Courtesy ICO Museum
Washington Street. View north from Chambers Street, 1967 by Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon / Magnum Photos. Courtesy ICO Museum
Beekman Street 80 and 82, 1967 by Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon / Magnum Photos. Courtesy ICO Museum
View to the south from no. 88 Gold Street, 1967 by Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon / Magnum Photos. Courtesy ICO Museum
An entrance on Reade Street to no. 187 West Street, 1967 by Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon / Magnum Photos. Courtesy ICO Museum
Demolition Worker, 1967 by Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon / Magnum Photos. Courtesy ICO Museum
Susquehanna Hotel, 3rd Floor Grass Room, 1967 by Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon / Magnum Photos. Courtesy ICO Museum
Staircase, 183 William Street, 1967 by Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon / Magnum Photos. Courtesy ICO Museum
88 Gold Street, 1967 by Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon / Magnum Photos. Courtesy ICO Museum
Self-portrait in an abandoned hotel room on West Street, 1967 by Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon / Magnum Photos. Courtesy ICO Museum
18 Spruce Street, 1967 by Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon / Magnum Photos. Courtesy ICO Museum
The Brooklyn Bridge area as seen from the roof of Beekman Hospital, 1967 by Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon / Magnum Photos. Courtesy ICO Museum
Aerial view of Manhattan, 1967 by Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon / Magnum Photos. Courtesy ICO Museum
Lifting a burner to cut the bolts of the cast iron facade of no. 82 Beekman Street, 1967 by Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon / Magnum Photos. Courtesy ICO Museum.
The exhibition approaches the city of the twentieth century, a Manhattan (New York) where the transformation process has been constant. Danny Lyon masterfully portrayed one of its most convulsive moments of change, after returning from Chicago in 1967.
A Manhattan immersed in one of its most profound transformations around the Brooklyn Bridge, Washington Market and West Street, which in part would give way to a new system of public squares but especially a demolition that among others would give way to the emergence of a new financial and commercial heart, the World Trade Center.
At the age of 25, an incipient prestige and consolidating himself as one of the most influential young photographers in the United States, Danny Lyon's project begins after having shared the previous two years with the Chicago Outlaws motorcycle gang, a period in which he would make The Bikeriders , one of his first works.
After arriving in New York, he accidentally settles very close to one of the two areas that were in the process of being demolished, in a short time, intuitively at first and later with a very ambitious project approach, he decides to record this transformation with his camera.
Danny Lyon documented the demolition by hand of 24 hectares of buildings in downtown New York mostly built in the 19th century, with buildings that, in some cases, dated back to the Civil War, the area that best remembers the first Dutch settlement, far from the development of the 1811 plan.
Calle Washington. Vista hacia el norte desde la calle Chambers, 1967 por Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon/Magnum Photos. Cortesía Museo ICO.
The photographs are the reflection of an urban debate that began in 1960, a wave of real estate speculation, which exemplifies the constant debate of urban transformation.
Danny Lyon wanted to draw an interior and exterior photographic map of these urban spaces, a document that would allow their subsequent visual reconstruction in as much detail as possible. "In the best of cases this plan will be a failure since the only thing I can hope for is to create an outline of what has been lost," Lyon would say.
As a result, many of the photos are spaces photographed from different visual positions, closing the circle with images of the demolitions.
Susquehanna Hotel, 3rd Floor Grass Room, 1967 by Danny Lyon. / © Danny Lyon / Magnum Photos. Courtesy ICO Museum.
This work is also the memory of places, of inhabited spaces, of the people who lived there, of spaces abandoned after the expropriations, spaces almost as if they were still alive. A project that he described as "very sad, except for the demolition workers and their work", for whom he felt deep respect, and from whose sample part of the exhibition reflects his portraits.
The ICO Museum also publishes, in collaboration with Aperture, the facsimile edition in Spanish of a fundamental work that, like few before and after, has managed to capture the essence of a disappearing city, its architecture and its last inhabitants. A book that, originally published by The Macmillan Company in 1969, became a cult work and a collector's item.
More information
Curator
Danny Lyon.
Venue / Adress
September 16 to January 17, 2021.
PHotoESPAÑA 2020 has been forced to modify its usual dates of celebration due to the COVID-19 crisis and will last until October 31, 2020.
PHotoESPAÑA 2020 has been forced to modify its usual dates of celebration due to the COVID-19 crisis and will last until October 31, 2020.
Dates
Museo ICO. C/ Zorrilla, 3. 28014 - Madrid, Spain.
From Tuesday to Saturday 11:00 - 20:00. Sunday and holidays 10:00 - 14:00 h. Closed Monday.
From Tuesday to Saturday 11:00 - 20:00. Sunday and holidays 10:00 - 14:00 h. Closed Monday.
Production, organization
Fundación ICO, in Spain.
Danny Lyon
Danny Lyon, He was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 16, 1942. He studied history and philosophy at the University of Chicago. Since he was young, his life has been marked by social activism. In 1963 he began working as a photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee and became involved in the Civil Rights Movement. One of the main promoters of the ‘new documentary / New journalism’ and also one of the representatives of the so-called ‘Concerned photographers’, is considered one of the most influential and original photographers of the 20th century.
He spent several decades touring the US and, as a result of those trips, he developed several photographic works that are a reflection of hidden realities. For more than a year he visited some American prisons where the inmates with the longest sentences in the Western world were held. He showed with pictures how they lived their day to day life and established a relationship with some of them, with whom he shared time and space behind bars.
From 1963 to 1967 Danny Lyon lived with the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club biker gang, portraying the lifestyle of these bikers. From that experience was born The Bikeriders, an iconic photo exhibition, which portrays the life and customs of a group of motorcyclists, with which he tried to neutralize the negative stereotypes associated with them.
His work stands out for the special involvement he demonstrated with the communities and themes he photographed in the United States. As with Robert Frank or William Klein, his series and books, beyond seeking only political compromise, show that authorship is more important than the topic at hand.
In the case of Lyon, moreover, photographic practice as personal learning and the desire to live experiences on the fringes of official history are features that are reflected in the whole of his work, which is part of the main collections in the world, such as those of MoMA and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Among his main works, in addition to ‘The destruction of Lower Manhattan’ (1967), are ‘Uptown’ (1965), ‘The Bikeriders’ (1967) or o Conversations with the Dead ’(1971).
He spent several decades touring the US and, as a result of those trips, he developed several photographic works that are a reflection of hidden realities. For more than a year he visited some American prisons where the inmates with the longest sentences in the Western world were held. He showed with pictures how they lived their day to day life and established a relationship with some of them, with whom he shared time and space behind bars.
From 1963 to 1967 Danny Lyon lived with the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club biker gang, portraying the lifestyle of these bikers. From that experience was born The Bikeriders, an iconic photo exhibition, which portrays the life and customs of a group of motorcyclists, with which he tried to neutralize the negative stereotypes associated with them.
His work stands out for the special involvement he demonstrated with the communities and themes he photographed in the United States. As with Robert Frank or William Klein, his series and books, beyond seeking only political compromise, show that authorship is more important than the topic at hand.
In the case of Lyon, moreover, photographic practice as personal learning and the desire to live experiences on the fringes of official history are features that are reflected in the whole of his work, which is part of the main collections in the world, such as those of MoMA and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Among his main works, in addition to ‘The destruction of Lower Manhattan’ (1967), are ‘Uptown’ (1965), ‘The Bikeriders’ (1967) or o Conversations with the Dead ’(1971).
