Nathan Lyons: In Pursuit of Magic

Launching his curatorial career at the George Eastman House in 1957, Nathan Lyons (1930–2016) soon made a mark in the museum world and in his workshops for photographers and curators alike. Yet his supporting role in the careers of rising stars such as Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand sometimes eclipsed the public’s awareness of Lyons’s own pioneering photography. Coinciding with a major exhibition at the George Eastman Museum in 2019, Nathan Lyons: In Pursuit of Magic is a long-overdue celebration of Lyons’s astonishing body of work.

Featuring more than two hundred and fifty compelling images, accompanied by critical essays, the book charts the distinct phases of Lyons’s career. His early work, exemplified by his exuberant initiatives of the 1960s—the Visual Studies Workshop and the Society for Photographic Education—demonstrated that street photography and formalism are not mutually exclusive, as university photography courses began migrating from journalism to art departments. His final years, which included a shift to color at age eighty, are also explored in depth. A companion to Nathan Lyons: Selected Essays, Lectures, and Interviews, this is the definitive visual sourcebook on a highly influential innovator.

Lisa Hostetler is Curator in Charge and Jamie M. Allen is Associate Curator of the Department of Photography at the George Eastman Museum.

Jessica S. McDonald is Curator of Photography at the Harry Ransom Center and the editor of Nathan Lyons: Selected Essays, Lectures, and Interviews, a companion volume to Nathan Lyons: In Pursuit of Magic.

Founded in 1947 and located in Rochester, New York, on the estate of George Eastman, a pioneer of photography and film, the George Eastman Museum is the world's oldest photography museums and one of the oldest film archives, with major collections in photography and cinema and their technologies, as well as photography books.