Shakedown, Ramsey Unit, Texas
1967-69
Throughout 1967, Danny Lyon photographed daily life at six texas prisons. These images appeared in his 1969 book, "Conversations with the Dead", along with an inmate's letters, and commentary.
Lyon took this photograph at the Ramsey prison, where inmates worked on a sixteen thousand-acre farm. He capture the humiliating and invasive nature of the strip search that prisoners endured when they returned from the fields. Lyon further dramatizes the scene by using a sharp angle, and by emphasizing the contrast between the man's body and the sky. Lyon has said of these photographs: "I tried with whatever power I had to make a picture of imprisonment as distressing as I knew it to be in reality."
Gelatin Silver Print
8 11/16 x 13 in. (22.1 x 33 cm)
Gift of Steven and Judith Clifford in honor of the museum's 50th year
83.288.17
Photo: Elizabeth Mann
