JUNK : America in Ruins

A portrait of once-beloved, now-decaying cars in junkyards across America, from one of the New Journalism’s key figures

Brooklyn-born photographer Danny Lyon (born 1942) is one of the most influential photographers of the last six decades. His immersive and groundbreaking works include The Bikeriders (1968), The Destruction of Lower Manhattan (1969) and his 2024 memoir This Is My Life I'm Talking About.
When he was 21, Lyon’s father passed on to him a 1953 Oldsmobile. He discovered the ecstasy of speeding along Georgia highways during the civil rights movement, with red dirt fields of peanuts and cotton flying by. In the excitement of driving, he realized his own mortality. Lyon’s Junk: America in Ruins features approximately 86 American cars, mostly from the 1950s and 1960s, in junkyards across the western United States. The pictures were taken in Nebraska, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma.
This is a work of pure visual photography. The premise behind the work is that many things―sculptures, monuments, buildings―take on a new and added beauty as they deteriorate and become ruins: a certain pathos is added to their original beauty. This is true of the automobiles in this series: once the beloved machines of people and families who owned and drove them, they now evoke a terrible beauty and sadness.

Danny Lyon (né en 1942 à New York) est l'un des photographes documentaires les plus influents de sa génération. Alors qu'il était encore étudiant à l'université de Chicago, il a été emprisonné dans le Sud et est devenu le premier photographe du Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Ses photographies ont constitué l'essentiel du livre The Movement. De retour à Chicago en 1965, il rejoint le Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club. Les deux années qu'il passe au sein du club donnent lieu à la publication d'un livre qui fera date, The Bikeriders. En 1967, Lyon obtient l'accès au système pénitentiaire du Texas et produit la série Conversations with the Dead. À sa sortie de prison, Lyon retourne à New York, où il rencontre le photographe et cinéaste Robert Frank. Ensemble, ils créent la société Sweeney Films.