Conversations with the Dead: Photographs of Prison Life, with the Letters and Drawings of Billy McCune #122054

by Danny Lyon

A digitally remastered facsimile edition of Danny Lyon's seminal 1971 photobook, highly influential in the history of documentary photography.

Conversations with the Dead provides an extraordinary photographic record of life inside six Texas prisons and the relationships Lyon built with the inmates. Revolutionary at the time of publication, it was one of the first photobooks to include ephemera.

This new edition has been updated with an afterward by Lyon himself detailing what happened to the inmates in the 40 years since the book was first published. It also offers new, unseen material including outtake images, audio recordings and newly commissioned texts on a specially created microsite as a free ibook edition of this landmark publication.

Features:
- A new afterward by Danny Lyon

Genres: Photography, Art, Nonfiction

196 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book of photographs of the insides of Texas prisons in the late '60s. Somehow, Danny Lyon got permission to take pictures inside all of the state prisons in Texas--the photographss are quite good and sometimes moving. He also formed a friendship with one of the inmates, Billy McCune. Billy was a loser--he came from a broken home, was kicked out of the navy (it sounds like an accumulation of petty offenses), and was convicted of raping a women in Waco. He had been kept in a home for the retarded and was held in the psychotic section of the highest security prison. Along the way, he cut off his penis. Nevertheless, his writing is incredibly good, and his drawings are okay. The whole story is so sad.

For example it takes him literally years to get permission to get the art supplies for his drawing. They give him part of a table in the leather working room for his drawings.

Danny Lyon graduated from the University of Chicago, and I found out about him in one of the alumni magazines. I occasionally will pick up a book of photographs, and have started to include these in my Goodreads lists.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book is a masterpiece, stands alongside The Americans by Robert Frank

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

"The past is a different country" was again proved true in the photographs and in people's ability to write in this work. This book came up in connection to others I've read recently (Hometown by Sherwood Anderson and Land of the Free by Archibald MacLeish). I never would have thought to read on this topic - Texas prisons in the 1960s - and found it quite interesting, even if I found the author's endnote opinions on the penal system to be proven wrong by his own work and "epilogues" of the major characters.

[kerrycat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes me wonder whatever happened to these boys and men - some of them were so very young. Stunning photos - just stunning.